Magnetic Mosaics "My First Picture Maker" Review and Giveaway

I had the extreme pleasure of trying out one of the MANY art kits created by The Orb Factory.   This couldn't come at a better time because the summertime "I've got nothing to do" whining has started in this house.  Has it started at yours too??  When this arrived we were out of town, so they girls were super excited to come home and see what arrived for them in the box. 

The Orb Factory has 7 different brands of products including Stick 'n Style, Sticky Mosaics, Magnetic Mosaics, and SparkleUps (to name a few).  Their products are available online,

I received the Magnetic Mosaics My First Picture Maker to try out with the girls.  It retails for $19.99 and is intended for children ages 4+.  The kit comes with 300 reusable foam magnets square tiles and 10 double sided templates for the kids to use. 

Right out of the box, the only set up you need to do is take apart the 300 foam magnetic pieces.  I put Allison (she's 5) to work on breaking apart the pieces and went to start making dinner.  She thought it was a fun game to pop them out. :)  It took her about 20 minutes to get all of the squares apart, but if a grown up was doing it, it probably would have taken less than 10 minutes to be ready to play with.

Now, as a teacher who doesn't like to waste anything and can see potential learning ideas from just about any scrap of material (by the way this drives my husband nuts!), I took the extra square magnetic foam pieces (that should have been trash) and I cut them apart into different sized pieces and let the girls use them to make letters and pictures on our magnetic board.  :)

This kit comes with the intention of one child using this activity as it has one magnetic board included in the kit.  But having 2 very interested girls, I decided to improvise and let one of them use the back side of a cookie sheet so they could both work on creating pictures together.  This worked wonderfully until they both needed the same color pieces and there weren't any left in the box.  So this really is only meant for one child at a time.  Don't worry, we didn't have any issues over the lack of pieces because my 3 year old was ready to be done and happily gave her pieces to her big sister.

One thing I absolutely love about this product, is that this kit is completely adaptable for many different ages and abilitites and also works on several different skill concepts.  The templates have different concepts on each side for the kids to match.  Kids can work on matching letters, numbers, colors or shapes.  Some of the templates are in color (easier) and others are in black and white (harder).  This is a great way to customize this for your child's ability and skill level!

My girls LOVED creating these pictures and I cannot wait to sneak it out of our house and take it to school for my Preschoolers to use in our classroom!  (Shh..don't tell my girls).  I also cannot wait to try out more Orb Factory products.  These would be great gifts for birthdays and Christmas too (hint, hint family!)

Check out their website and see the hundreds of different activities and kits you can purchase.  There literally is something for everyone!!  You can also follow them on Facebook or Twitter!

Here is our finished product!  Want to win one of The Orb Factory's My First Picture Makers for your family??  Enter the Rafflecopter form below.  (If it does not show up you may need to refresh this page).


 a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received the product mentioned above for free from The Orb Factory.  This in no way influenced my opinion and I received no monetary compensation. This giveaway is open to US and Canada residents only. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.