Fun with Magnets!

We discovered magnets recently by chance, as the cabinet locks we have installed are magnetic and have a little magnetic knob that "unlocks" the cabinets.  Somehow Brady got a hold of one of the magnetic knobs and it stuck to something.  He was amazed!  So that day I got out a metal cookie sheet and put some of the magnetic knobs on it for him to play with.  He loved it, so I decided to look into purchasing a few magnets.  They arrived the other day and boy are they neat!  I am extremely pleased with the items we received so I wanted to share them with you.

The Magnetic Easel I purchased is really neat because you can set it on the floor and it is at kid-level, like in this picture:

It is sturdy and is magnetized on both sides.  I imagine one day when they are older I can assign a side to Brady and a side to Chloe and maybe they can both play in peace!

I have been looking for more and more ways to incorporate letters into our everyday play, so I was very pleased with these Melissa & Doug Upper and Lower Case Letter Magnets.  I haven't used any of the lower case letters yet because we have just started the process of learning letters, so I don't want to make it even more confusing by also using lower case.

Another way I like to use the magnet board is to associate letters with words that begin with those letters.  I bought these wonderful Foam Magnets that have 60 objects in them.  I've found that they have approximately 2 items for each letter of the alphabet in the set.  Here is the magnet board combining the letters and objects:

Chloe now can recognize and name all of the letters in the alphabet I think, with the exception of maybe U and V (she gets these confused).  Brady has started to vocalize his recognition of letters as well this week, I've heard him correctly identify several.  He may recognize and know more and just hasn't vocalized it yet.  I have even started to dabble in associating letters with spelling small words.  I recognize it may be a long time before they understand spelling and words, it is just fun to play with the magnets in general, and I don't think it can hurt to expose them to it.

We play with the magnets on a daily basis.  Sometimes they are used for learning letters, identifying objects and building vocabulary, and a lot of times they just play with them for fun.

I hope you all are having a great weekend!  It is rainy here so we are having a relaxing weekend at home watching football and playing with toys (including our magnets!).