Looking for Magna Tile ideas for kids to build? Choose one of 320+ printable Magna Tile cards and build away! There are letters, numbers, geometric shapes, 2D/3D creative designs, animals, and seasonal ideas.

The sad truth of parenthood is most toys eventually fall out of favour, even as exciting and engaging as, say, Lego or Magnetic tiles. Sometimes interest comes back after a break. And other times, there must be a prompt, a challenge, or a new way to look at an old toy.

Magna Tiles have been a firm favourite in our house since my eldest turned two. There were months when they were taken out every day, and there were also months when the kids didn’t play with magnetic tiles much. The return of their interest often coincided with finding one of those printable design cards I had made for them. They would try to replicate the design and, in no time, get sucked into the world of magnetic play all over again.

Even as I was photographing some of these cards, they got attracted to the activity. You can see their hands in the pictures as they were busily working on figuring out how to arrange magnetic tiles and solving magnetic puzzles.

They treat these Magna Tile ideas cards as puzzles and challenges. They’re capable of coming up with great ideas for creative building, but there is a particular challenge involved in repeating the pattern on the cards, which appeals to them differently.

While playing with magnetic building tiles develops creativity, working on cards helps with problem-solving skills. The kids have a certain sense of satisfaction when they get the design right – they have solved the problem!

Different Magna Tile Ideas

We made the first Magna Tile ideas cards shortly after my son turned three – they featured uppercase letters of the alphabet. Being a very hands-on kid, who likes to make whatever he is learning about, he asked me to build a couple of letters for him. Eventually, we did the whole alphabet. I photographed it so he could return and make the letters again.

After that, we made lowercase letters, numbers, geometric shapes, and 2D and 3D designs. It was fun, so we started making themed packs and added animals, spring, autumn, and winter designs. Ultimately, we got over 300 Magna Tiles ideas in all the packs!

Alphabet Magna Tile cards (both uppercase and lowercase) are great for preschool or kindergarten literacy centres, whether in a homeschool room or a traditional classroom. They actually work well in a Montessori environment! Everything in this activity is neatly contained, and children can easily check their work according to the printable designs.

Number and geometric shape Magna tile designs would also make an excellent addition to a math centre.

And the pack of 2D creative designs is simply fun to build with! The designs on the cards are two-dimensional, but they give ideas for connecting the magnetic blocks in different creative ways that can be used in three-dimensional constructions as well.

Of course, three-dimensional designs are where Magna Tiles really shine! After all, you can build some very intricate architectural structures and even incorporate other toys into the structures.

The 3D creative designs pack also includes some geometric forms. It teaches children their proper geometric names and also introduces the idea of how they can be built. After all, once you can create a cube from Magna Tiles, you can easily make a box from paper or wood.

Magna-Tile Animal pack provides a connection between building and studying zoology, making it a great STEAM project!

Both in a homeschool environment and a traditional classroom, it is nice to rotate activities depending on the season, and that’s why we created more magnet tile ideas with seasonal celebrations in mind. There are separate packs for spring, autumn, winter, and summer. You can also get them together in a bundle.

And you can always try a free sample of the designs!

Why Use Magna Tile Idea Cards?

Working with Magna Tile printable cards is beneficial for:

• Studying the alphabet, numbers, and geometric shapes in a hands-on way
• Developing critical thinking and engineering skills while working on building challenges
• Practising matching skills, counting and patterning
• Building on vertical surfaces, such as magnetic whiteboards or fridges
• Giving children a chance to look at a familiar toy from a new perspective

Which Magnetic Tile Brand to Use?

Sometimes I get asked which magnetic building tiles I recommend.

At first, we used the original Magna-Tiles, and they still constitute the majority of our collection. We tried various other brands, and they will work as long as they look similar to the original Magna-Tiles!

So, you can use Picasso Tiles, Playbees, or Connetix Tiles. Some, like Magna-Tiles or Connetix tiles, seem to have slightly better magnets than other brands, but the difference is not a deal breaker for any designs.

The designs will not work with the original Magformers, though. They have different shapes.

The next important question is, how many tiles do you need to make these designs?

I recommend having a set of at least 100. You can possibly get away with 64 for building letters and numbers, but creative designs usually require a variety of tiles. And, of course, like with many other building systems, the more, the merrier. We have about 500 tiles right now. The other day, my daughter built a box for herself and her stuffed toy from Magna-Tiles.

Magna Tile Alphabet Cards

Both the uppercase and the lowercase alphabet cards come in three different scales:

• Entire alphabet on two sheets of paper: good for quick reference
• Four letters on one sheet: convenient card size
• One letter per sheet: close to full-scale and easiest to replicate

Magna Tile Number Cards

Numbers from 0 to 9 come on cards in three different scales:

• on one sheet of paper: good for quick reference
• four numbers on one sheet: convenient card size
• one number per sheet: close to full-scale and easiest to replicate

There is a bonus – two ways to build “4”, depending on your curriculum or preferred method!

Magna Tile Geometric Shapes

The Geometric Shape set is a little different than the rest of the cards. Other than printable cards with designs, it also includes challenge cards. Challenge cards give an idea of what shape to build and what tiles to use, but they do not show the design. For example: “Can you build a rectangle using four right triangles?” For children who cannot read, a picture of the shape is included.

There is a “solution” card that can be either printed on the back of the challenge card or used alone for building inspiration, just like all the other Magna Tile idea cards.

Creative Magna Tile Designs

2D Creative Designs was one of our favourite sets to create. We made designs for a heart, a Ferris wheel, a butterfly, a rocket, a hot air balloon, a mandala, and many more!

Some are simple enough that toddlers can work on them. When he was younger, my son loved repeating the Magna tile designs from the booklet that came with the toy. That booklet is long gone, though, so we wanted to make a set of our own cards for his little sister to recreate.

But there are also some more difficult designs that will provide a little challenge and a lot of inspiration for older builders.

The same is true for Magna Tile 3D Creative Designs. When working on that pack, we tried to pull together all the best ideas we had over the years of playing with magnetic blocks and put them into this pack.

Have your children tried making doll furniture from Magna Tiles?

This is just an example of a bed, but when children look at it, they start generating more ideas, “Could I also build a chair? A table? Maybe, a bunk bed? Can I build a whole room for my doll?”

And this was the premise behind creating the pack of printable 3D designs for building from Magna Tiles. It is not just a collection of 3D puzzles to build (though there are plenty of those), but also a collection of ideas for using Magna Tiles to generate play ideas.

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.

If your children love building with Magna-Tiles, this pack of printable animal designs can be 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.

We like to combine learning with holidays, and the seasonal magnetic tile ideas work great for that. The kids can build seasonal designs while celebrating holidays throughout the year—Valentine’s Day, Easter, Earth Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, and many others! Here are all the magnetic tile designs from the winter bundle.

The seasonal Magna-Tile bundle also features many seasonal designs that are not holiday-specific but relate to certain seasonal activities (ice skating in the winter, fireflies and sandcastles in the summer, umbrellas and rain boots in the spring, leaves and actors in the fall).

It was for this bundle that we first tried using stickers too. They are optional but they do give a new layer of creativity to building with magnetic tiles, as kids can use our printable stickers and also add their own designs. Check out the haunted house from the autumn design pack!

Get All the Magnetic Ideas Cards!

Magnetic Tiles Uppercase Alphabet

Magnetic Tiles Lowercase Alphabet

Magnetic Tiles Numbers

Magnetic Tiles Geometric Shapes

Magnetic Tiles 2D Creative Designs

Magnetic Tiles 3D Creative Designs

Magnetic Tile Animal Pack

Magnetic Tile Seasonal Bundle

You can also try a free sample with two Magna-Tile designs from six of the packs.