Extra building tips for toddlers

Posted by Zildjian Adornado on

Building is a great STEM-activity for toddlers and contributes to the cognitive development of your mini-me. On top of that, kids practice their motor skills while having fun. SmartMax are the ideal educational building toys for toddlers and pre-schoolers. They are sturdy, safe and allow kids to create 2D and 3D constructions. Here are some extra tips and tricks on how to build with these magnetic toys.

Reinforcing 3D structures
When building a 3D structure, like a cube, you’ll see that it can be wobbly when trying to add more bars on top of the cube. But don’t worry, you can easily reinforce your building structure by simply adding a diagonal bar like sown on the image.
SMARTMAX - Extra building tips for toddlers
Opposites attract.
Did you know that the colours of the SmartMax bars are also functional? When playing with these popular construction toys, you’ll notice that bars with cold colours like blue, green, and purple can’t be connected to each other! These bars will only stick to bars with warm colours like yellow, red, and pink. This is because of magnetism! The cold coloured bars have north poles directed outwards. Warm colours have south poles directed outwards. When building, make sure to switch between cold and warm colours if you want the bars to stick.
Bars and balls
The SmartMax balls are made from metal. This means that all bars, even though they do not always stick to each other, can stick to a ball regardless of their colour. So, if you would like to attach two bars of the same colour, you can put a ball between them to joint. One ball can connect more than 20 bars!
Long and short bars
There is also a difference in magnetic strength between the short and the long bars. Shorter bars have weaker magnets than long bars. If your construction work needs a stronger (yet child-safe) magnet, use long bars instead of shorts.
SMARTMAX - Summer Build Inspiration

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