Family of mice. Ahead, of course, is a troublemaking baby mouse, on the left is dad mouse, he is taller, on the right is mom mouse.
Arishka’s Mice
Author: TatianaZh
SmartMax Panels
We liked the panels, you can make a wall, or floor, or ceiling. The panels are multi-colored, some are also transparent. The rod and the panel are connecting well, it is easier to remove the panel with the rod from the structure and disconnect the rod after that than to try to remove the panel from the structure.
SmartMax Container Jars
We really wanted to try out a completely phenomenon in magnetic building – a round transparent container. We ordered 2 for testing – with balls, which are always in short supply, and curved parpiecests, which we had little. SmartMax released 6 of these jars – with long and short rods, with additional magnetic flowers and with pieces that glow in the dark.
Tegu Jumper
Biggest of the Tegu Jumper sets has 25 pieces of 12 kinds.
Another Magformers Chinese Clone – Magic Piece
We soon will be able to make an encyclopedia of Magformers clones – Magsmarters, Ginimag, Magic Piece, Mag-Wisdom, and, finally PowerClix by Guidecraft. The latter, although considered American, is still made in China. We checked out the first 2 clones – 100% match in quality and magnetic properties. Magic Piece is very similar to Ginimag. We liked PowerClix because of its magnetic sticks. In Mag-Wisdom, I personally liked the multi-page colorful mathematics album-manual, which I later found on Magformers site – you can download it and use it in a game with a building kit, pretty much like albums for Dienes blocks.
Tegu Jumper
The new set is hardly related to the popular type of clothing – jumper, the name is based on the verb Jump. The largest of the 4 is reinforced with 4 wheels with fat tires. Apparently, you are supposed to jump on them. You can build everything – from a simple motorcycle to a truck with a trailer. If there was a propeller, it would be great, but no – the propellers are in other sets. But Tegu now has a character, so to speak, “Tegu’s face” – a cylinder with eyes – indicated by an arrow.
Green Girl
6-year-old Alesya built herself a friend – she has a skirt, 2 ponytails, and even a small green bang.
The Temple
Large-scale construction using can-containers. We built it back when we still had few balls, so we took some of the balls from American Magtastik set. They are larger and not always steel-colored, but my daughters tried to fit them into the color scheme. And as always, there are not enough balls and rods…
Magtastik Town
The favorite pastime of 6-year-old Anny is building cities from different building sets. This one is from the Magtastik magnetic construction set. She really likes the variety of holders-stands for the balls in this kit.
Taikon And A Baseplate
An Taikon octagonal star connector we attached to a baseplate – in this case, a black baseplate from a mosaic kit. The star fits perfectly, not too tightly, and holds naturally, so the younger ones immediately stuck these star pieces all over the plate.
Building straws, also known as building tubes, are a popular type of construction set with unique possibilities. They allow you to create silhouettes and contours of different objects and animals. All crafts from these sets can bend and move, so kids can actually play with their creations.
Instead of blocks, these sets have flexible plastic tubes, that look and act like soft cocktail straws. They can bend in any way and hold any position you want. The tubes usually attach to each other with special plastic connectors. The connectors can look and work differently in the different sets, but there are always many ways the straws can connect. The most common version is hard pins that go inside the straw’s hollow end, fixing it in place. Some connectors of this type have only one or two pins, some may have eight or ten. They also can have different forms, like sharp corners or straight rods. However, this connection type usually means that you can connect the straws only with their ends, and never with their middles.
These straws have great building potential, but, sadly, they can’t hold their shape under pressure (unlike, say, block towers that can hold something on their top). The straws’ building possibilities also depend on how long they are.
