Animal Magna-Tile Idea Cards

Combine the study of animals with engineering by using these printable magna tile idea cards and inspiring young builders to create 40 animal designs from magnetic tiles!

In order to make a connection with a new topic of study, it sometimes helps to tie it in with an interest that your children already have.

From the beginning, my son was a builder, so everything was more fun if we could tie it in with LEGO blocks or Magna-Tiles. Even now, if he is excited about something, he goes and builds it in Minecraft. It works the other way around as well. If I want him to get excited about something, such as Ancient Rome, I ask him to built it with blocks or in Minecraft.

When my son was studying the alphabet, we used LEGO alphabet cards and Magna-Tile letter cards. And lately, we have been creating animal projects – animals from pattern blocks and LEGO habitats. And this Animal Magna Tile Cards is our latest addition to the animal unit study for engineers.

If your children love building with Magna-Tiles, this pack of printable animal designs can act as a path to an animal lesson! Vice versa, if your children love animals, this pack can give life to the old toy by challenging them to build animals with magnetic tiles.

Benefits of Magna-Tile Cards

There are two main ways to look at the printable cards.

One, the cards act as puzzles, like tangrams, to figure out and build. Each card presents a good enough view of the model for children to be able to figure out how it was constructed, however, it requires some thinking and engineering skills to build a copy of it. It also naturally involves the math skills of recognizing the shapes and counting the pieces out.

Two, the cards act as inspiration for future builds. After seeing how the animals on the cards are built, children can try to build other animals, using the same principles or by inventing new techniques. For instance, we figured out that standing tiles up works well for representing insect legs, and clear tiles make excellent wings.

Animal Magna-Tile Pack Features

· 40 magnetic tile designs (28 three-dimensional designs and 12 two-dimensional designs)

· the printable cards come in two scales (four cards on one sheet that is a convenient card size and one design on one sheet that is closer to full-scale and is easiest to replicate)

· all new designs that do not repeat our previous packs

Animals include penguin, koala, ostrich, peacock, turkey, octopus, scorpion, shrimp, grasshopper, spider, salamander, toad, and more!

You can try a free sample of the designs (two animals) or…

Get All the Animal Magna Tile Cards!

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