Looking for fun and educational activities that spark your child’s creativity? Here’s a collection of vertical play ideas using CONNETIX and loose parts that will engage your child while enhancing important skills like problem-solving and emotional development. Whether you’re a seasoned builder or just starting out, these activities offer something for all ages and skill levels.
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Inspired by the free CONNETIX Resources, I built three puzzles: an ice cream, a burger and an orange. Each puzzle’s parts are placed on different sizes of clear tiles, adding a fun challenge as kids need to match the pieces.
The process of piecing together a puzzle encourages logical thinking and helps children understand how parts fit together as a whole. To make it easier, I created reference versions of each puzzle in different colours, giving kids a guide to follow. This flexible play idea can be made as simple or challenging as you like by using basic builds for younger kids or more detailed, complex builds for older ones.
This activity encourages problem-solving, spatial awareness and colour matching while supporting fine motor development too—key skills that children can apply in various areas of learning. Plus, working on a vertical surface adds an extra layer of challenge and excitement!
Here’s my second vertical play idea on a magnetic wall: a beautiful nature scene featuring a tree with a parrot on a branch, a squirrel beneath it, a house beside the tree and a little bird perched on the house. You can turn this scene into a fun “Spot the 10 Differences” game! If you have a larger magnetic wall, build the second version with ten subtle changes. Or simply take a photo of the original scene, print it out and modify the build to create a second version.
This game encourages children to carefully observe and compare two scenes, helping to strengthen their visual discrimination and memory. As they search for differences, they engage in critical thinking, focusing on subtle details in the images. To make the challenge more accessible, you can start by making the differences more noticeable, allowing younger children to feel successful. As their skills improve, you can increase the difficulty by incorporating more complex and harder-to-spot differences. This progression helps develop attention to detail, enhances problem-solving abilities and boosts cognitive flexibility as children adjust to the varying levels of challenge.
The parrot featured in this game is inspired by a brilliant build by Amy Leung from the CONNETIX Community Group on Facebook.
The little bird in this game is inspired by a build from the CONNETIX YouTube page. CONNETIX provides so many creative build ideas across their resources. The best part? You can easily incorporate these ideas into your own creations, making each play session unique and full of imaginative possibilities!
Here’s a fun Symmetry Game I created with CONNETIX, which emphasises symmetry and design! I built 6 half butterflies—3 left halves and 3 right halves—each featuring a distinct colour sequence. The challenge is to match the left and right wings by placing the arrow triangle tile on the halves that fit together.
This game promotes visual perception, problem-solving and pattern recognition skills, which are key concepts young school-aged children often learn in school. By working with different colour sequences and patterns, children can sharpen their ability to identify and create patterns, boosting their cognitive development. You can adjust the complexity by using simple colour patterns for younger kids or more intricate sequences for older ones, making this game a great fit for a range of ages and abilities!
Transform your magnetic wall into a face-making station! I started by building four blank face shapes with CONNETIX, providing a simple foundation for children to explore their imagination. Using loose parts like bolts, nuts, sparkling gems, googly eyes and jar lids, kids can customise the faces, designing everything from silly to strange or even cute expressions.
As children engage with this activity, they’ll experiment with different facial features, learning about emotions through their creations. This hands-on process promotes emotional awareness, as they explore how various expressions convey feelings. Additionally, as they decide which parts fit best, kids enhance their hand-eye coordination and problem-solving abilities. Tactile exploration with various materials fosters sensory learning, while the open-ended nature of the activity encourages self-expression and storytelling, giving every face its own unique character.
Vertical play on a magnetic wall transforms simple activities into immersive learning experiences. By incorporating CONNETIX and loose parts, these play ideas encourage children to think critically, solve problems and strengthen fine motor skills as they manipulate shapes, colours and textures. The process of building and arranging tiles fosters spatial awareness, while engaging with loose parts helps develop hand-eye coordination and decision-making. Each activity is designed to stimulate creativity and exploration, offering hands-on opportunities for self-expression and emotional development. Through this interactive play, children learn not just by completing tasks, but by engaging in the process of discovery, experimentation and expression.
Lucy is a mom and content creator on Instagram, passionate about building big architectural structures with CONNETIX. She considers herself as an #adultswhoconnetix, and loves sharing play ideas, how-to-videos and her love for indoor gardening.
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