As a lover of art and children, I’m always bummed when I hear children who feel discouraged about their art or creativity skills. It’s fairly common for young kids to feel like they “can’t” create art simply because they can’t draw or paint things that look a lot like the real thing. My almost 6 year old niece Ava has fallen into this trap and when I heard of the Magna Color I thought it might help her feel successful at being creative.
The Magna Color includes a set of plastic “pens” that you can fill with these small metallic dots. While they are metallic and will cling to the magnetic Magna Color, the dots themselves are not magnets. When you push the filled pen against a magnetic surface like the Magna Color, the dots come out one at a time. This allows you to create trails of “dots” to create words or images. Each pen has a slightly different sized internal compartment, and each color of dot is slightly different in size so that each pen can only fit one color of dots.
The Magna Color surface has a frame that lifts up so that you can “pin” the paper stencils in place. The stencils are pictures that have colored circles on them so that kids know exactly where to place each color of dot to finish the image. These are great for children who are a bit apprehensive about creating their own works of art from their imagination. Ava really liked these because she was able to feel successful at being creative while having the structure and guidance of the stencil. Once finished, putting on the 3d glasses makes the dots really pop in a neat way. I wish that there had been more stencils in the box because I think she’d use these for a long time if there were more. She was uncertain about creating images on her own but was happy to write words or letters on her own which is still great because she’s in kindergarten so any letter or spelling practice is awesome, especially when it’s disguised as play!
Because Ava was mostly interested in using the stencils, she didn’t mind only having four colors but I think that children who are more into creating their own pieces would likely appreciate having more colors. Ava is almost 6 and at first she was frustrated with clearing the magna dots from the device. It comes with a squeegee that allows you to ‘push’ the dots up towards the top and then they fall back behind the Magna Color. However, if you do this with the top frame in place, some of the dots get stuck between the frame and the drop down compartment so I just showed her how to lift the frame before clearing the dots and then she didn’t have any problems.
Once the dots fall into the back, you shake from side to side and up and down and the dots will fall through the filters until get are separated. Then you put the pens in place and make sure that the bottom end is slid open (so that the dots can fall in) and tip the Magna Color sideways so that the dots fall in. Occasionally the dots would be tilted sideways and cause the dots to be unable to fill the pen so Ava would bring it to us so we could fix it and then she’d go on her way. Because of these small things, I think for kids under age 8 or so it would be best to have a parent around for occasional help but Ava enjoyed the Magna Color despite these small hangups.
A small group of Magna Colors sold last summer had malfunctioning pens. Tech 4kids (the manufacturer of Magna Color) always stand behind their product and want to make sure that anyone who got the malfunctioning pens can contact them at toys@tech4kids.com to get a new set of pens and dots.
Connect: You can connect with Magna Color on Facebook.
Buy it: You can purchase Magna Color at toys R us, Wal-mart, Kmart, Amazon and more. Suggested retail price is $24.99.
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Hi there! I am Emily Evert, the owner of Emily Reviews. I am 28 and live in a small town in Michigan with my boyfriend Ryan and our two pugs. I have a large family and I adore my nieces and nephews. I love reading memoirs, and learning about child development and psychology. I love watching The Game of Thrones, Teen Mom, Sister Wives and Veep. I like listening to Jason Isbell, John Prine, and other alt-country or Americana music. I created Emily Reviews as a creative outlet to share my life and the products that I love with others.
This post currently has 6 responses.
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That looks like so much fun! I love how it sorts the dots instead of having to worry about them making a mess or getting lost.
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Shauna
This looks like a lot of fun and I will definitely add it to my shopping list
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That is so neat and looks like something my kids would love. I’ll have to add it to their wish list.
I love how it sorts and reloads like that. I can’t even imagine having to do that all manually from a pile on the floor!