Cognitive development
Ina’s workshop
Suggested age: Ages 3 to 10
Colorful tiles that stick together like magnets. What will you build?
For parents and caregivers
How Ina’s workshop helps your child grow
Building with tiles that stick like magnets is playing with geometry without noticing: you look, imagine and try. Here is how it’s played, what it builds and how to keep going at home.
How it’s played
There are two modes. In “Build the figure”, your child picks a level and a figure (a tower, a house, a rocket, a castle…) and moves each tile into its place: on easy every place shows its color, on medium only the outline shows and the tiles have to be turned, and on hard a sample figure is copied onto an empty board. If a tile doesn’t go there, it returns to the tray with no penalty, and after a few tries its place glows as a hint. In “Free building” there are unlimited tiles: they stick edge to edge like magnets, anything left hanging falls to the floor, and your child can undo, turn tiles and save the building in a gallery that stays only on the device.
What they are learning
Turning a triangle so it fits, or copying a figure tile by tile, builds spatial reasoning and visualization: picturing how a shape will look before moving it, a foundation of math and geometry. Children also recognize shapes (squares, triangles, half squares), discover that two half squares make a roof, and practice planning, trying and correcting. Free building adds imagination and the pride of showing what they made.
Ideas to keep going at home
- Ask which shapes they used: how many squares? how many triangles?
- Ask them to build something from their favorite Mora story and tell you about it.
- If you have blocks or magnetic tiles, copy one of the game’s figures together.
- Look for squares and triangles around the house: windows, roofs, signs.
A tip from Mora: play together for a short while, 5 to 10 minutes, and talk when you finish. Screens work best as a starting point for family conversations rather than as a solo activity: real learning happens in the conversation, which is the heart of the Mora method.