Magnet Madness – Three DIY ways to play with magnets

“Do you think you could get the front off our old washing machine?”

I am pretty sure my husband wasn’t impressed by my question at 3pm on a holiday Monday when he was painting our new laundry. But he was the one who kept the broken washing machine, you know, ‘just in case it might come in handy’, so I knew he’d see it as a challenge and rise to it.

Of course that is exactly what happened. Half an hour later her carried in the front panel of our washing machine. Nothing a little angle grinding, hitting with a hammer, filing, and tenacity couldn’t achieve.

It wasn’t until this large piece of white metal was sitting in our living room did he ask me what I wanted it for.
“I just thought a mega magnet board would be fun” I replied… and boy have we had fun with it!

Of course you don’t have to rip the panel off your washing machine to make a magnet board, you can buy an oil pan/drip tray and use that. Teach Preschool shares some simple, step by step, instructions on how to make one.

At first we played with our Magformers magnetic building set on the mega magnet board and had so much fun creating 3D constructions and patterns that I was inspired to make some more magnet sets to play with.

Here are three easy ways to play with magnets that we’ve used on our mega magnet board today.

Homemade Wooden Magnets

My husband is not the only one who likes a challenge that involves tools. In between cooking dinner, and bathing kids, I decided I wanted to make some wooden magnets, so I dashed out to the wood pile and rescued a few bits of firewood and quickly sawed them into slices.

While the roast cooked, I painted some of them with our marker paint and left them to dry (yep we’ve used the marker paint a lot lately).

This morning I cut up pieces of old promtional fridge magnets and hot glued them to the back of the wood slices. I also glued magnets to some coloured icey-pole (popsicle) sticks. Make sure you glue the magnets on well and are aware of the choking hazard if you are playing with small children.

These wooden magnets were lots of fun and can be used in so many ways.

Magnets and White Board Markers

Inspired by the big white space of the magnet board I hunted out some whiteboard markers and picture magnets.

We have some lovely wooden picture magnets with vehicles and animals on them, but you could make your own easily using stickers like Christie did at Childhood101. You could even print out our Space Crazy play dough accessories and turn them into magnets, or any of our printable puppets.

We made a map with a farm, a zoo, a hospital and a beach!

Printable Shape Magnets

You didn’t think I’d play with magnets and not make a printable did you? Of course not!

Our printable robot magnets have been played with till they fell apart so I knew some more printable magnets were definitely in order. This time I kept it super simple and went with a sheet of triangles and a sheet of squares and rectangles in bright colours.

You can download the free pdf file for the triangles here, and for the squares and rectangles here.

I printed ours right onto printable magnet sheets but you could print them onto photo paper, cut them out and glue old fridge magnets to the back for the same effect.

It is amazing what you can create with just a few simple shapes.

Noah played with the magnets all afternoon and then the big kids came home from school and played with them too. Now the magnet board is covered in a crazy magnet madness and waiting to be played with again tomorrow!

Now I am wondering what else we can use on our mega magnet board.
I would love you all to share your ideas!