Reviewed: Connetix’s Pastel Creative Pack

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When it comes to toys for my four year old, at the top of the list is anything building! As a massive fan of legoland and all things bricks, he is a huge construction fan and when he discovered magnetic blocks, he was hooked on those too.

Not only are magnetic blocks super easy to create all kinds of things from but, as a parent, I love how they also provide endless opportunities for things like imaginative play, problem-solving, and creativity. And, I can’t lie, the sensory seeker in me actually finds them pretty addictive too,

Connetix are known for their innovation, and vibrant magnetic tile designs so we were so excited when we were lucky enough to be sent their 120 Piece Pastel Creative Pack, so let’s dive in and tell you what’s inside, our thoughts and how you can use them too!

What’s included in Connetix’s Pastel Creative Pack?

Inside our 120 Piece Pastel Creative Pack is a beautiful treasure trove of colorful, translucent magnetic tiles that are mesmerising (and addictive for adults and children to play with alike). Included are various different shapes and sizes (with large squares, two types of triangles and different types of squares including ones for windows, perfect for building houses) in beautiful range of rainbow pastel hues (8 different ones in total), such as blue, pink and green.

The shapes quickly attract and pull together thanks to their super strong magnetic design-meaning you can quickly push together (and pull apart) towers, shapes and constructions at the drop of the hat. This set has 120 pieces so there’s more than enough to build a whole range of things and plenty to go around if there’s siblings playing together. The tiles are of course made from non-toxic, BPA-free materials, offering increased safety of children during play, which is of course the most important thing.

How can you use Connectix’s Pastel Creative Pack?

There are so many different things you can do with this Connectix pack. Children can build everything from super tall towers, to bridges for cars to go under, rainbow hued castles, and even a rainbow themselves. We used our tiles in so many different ways including…

5 ways we used our Connectix’s tiles

Number and letter fun-my son realised he could use the squares and triangles to build letters and numbers (my son is likely hyperlexic, so he often things in letters and numbers but this was a completely different way of playing with them).

This was also great as we’re currently practising pencil grip and writing so understanding how to break down letters and numbers into different segments is really important to help when he starts to write them too.

Shape play: My son also loves shapes! magnetic tiles often come in different shapes and vibrant colors so are great to teach children about shapes, colors, and patterns. We also used the triangles and squares to make more shapes of our own-for example using the scalene triangles to make a semi-circle or the triangles to make diamonds.

Making bridges: Magnetic tiles are excellent for building all sorts of different structures. Children can create towers, houses and bridges. This activity enhances their spatial awareness, creativity, and problem-solving skills.We even added our creative pack to our lego to make a bridge over the top of the train track and train he had build with our lego, and added some figures to the top of the bridge too! So we managed to use the blocks to help our imaginative play too.

Storytelling and Imaginative Play: Your magnetic tiles can even serve as a backdrop for imaginative play and storytelling too. Children can build scenes, create characters, and act out different ideas using the tiles as props; helping with their creativity and communication skills. My son’s favourite book is currently Winnie the Pooh’s let’s learn the rainbow, so we read the story and made the shapes and colours in the book.

Building towers: And of course, towers, our favourite. Thanks to the magnetic pull you can build towers super quickly-and knock them down of course too!

Of course, this list will expand even more when we get older! Magnetic tiles are great tools for introducing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) with older children as they can learn how exactly magnets work to attract and repel. They can even use them in artistic subjects to create abstract designs and mosaics.

How to use magnetic tiles to help with speech delay

As you may know, my son has speech delay so whenever I try a new toy-I always think about how it can help with speech and communication! There are so many ways you can use these tiles to encourage this.

Firstly, they’re really great for collaborative play with siblings, peers, or family members. This interaction allows them to practice turn-taking (which is SO important to help speech to develop) listening, and responding appropriately.

Magnetic tiles provide a visual and tactile learning experience that can aid when trying to build words. Creating simple sentences and phrases, such as colours and shapes and phrases like ‘build a bridge,’ ‘knock it down’, ‘push’ and ‘pull’ can all help when building language-you could even add a page to your AAC device.

Our review: Connectix’s Pastel Creative Pack-is it worth buying?

There are so many benefits to Connectix’s and we absolutely loved our pastel pack. Firstly, they develop really essential skills such as spatial awareness, fine motor skills, and hand-eye coordination. My son struggles with fine motor skills so I love how these can help with that and also being a great screen-free activity. He has started to get more creative with his blocks and I do think that the process of designing and building with the tiles really does help with things like creativity and problem-solving. We have also really loved playing with them together and because there’s 120 pieces, there’s plenty for a whole family to join and play together. I can see these lasting for many years to come-as my son gets more imaginative and creative, and this is really such a well made set that will grow with him for definite. Whilst we stuck with more basic structures for now, older children may enjoy making even bigger constructions and patterns-to support their learning of mathematics and science at school.