Storymaker: Magnetic Poetry

We love making these stories! I love all things words.. so I’m easy to please. But I’m also now homeschooling a 5 & 6 year old & both are just emerging as readers. This is a fun way to make short silly fun-to-read “lessons” that we can squeeze in without them even realizing they’re practicing. Wayyyy more fun than a workbook. There seem to be plenty of words from every phonetic combination to be a well-rounded practice & plenty of just-big-enough words to push their reading vocabulary.

I work with four kindergarten classes each day, and one of the teachers has Magnetic Poetry Kids Story Maker magnets on a file cabinet in her room where they are accessible to all of her students. These magnets make it enjoyable for the students to create thoughts, poetry, messages and short stories. I love to begin a poem before I leave the class and see how the students will complete it. I enjoyed using the story-starter magnets so much, I bought myself a set and combined it with the Poets magnet set. I am able to use these magnets in grades K-6 to encourage students to write and I use them frequently to challenge myself to extend my own writing.

Although I originally thought that this product should have come with more magnets, but it turns out that it was perfect for my 4 and five year old children. More choices makes it impossible for them to choose. My five year old is learning to read and these are a great motivator to practice. My four year old can choose the parts of a sentence based off of the colors of the magnets and enjoys me reading the results to him. Both think the combintations are hilarious.

We have a boy in 2nd grade and a boy in Kindergarten so we bought this set thinking that it would be a good way to help them with sentence creation. They were very excited at first, but like most things the interest waned after awhile. The main problem is that even though the phrases are helpful for making sentences, they also tend to limit creativity a bit. For our son in kindergarten the words are a bit too advanced, but we knew that. However, using colors for the different types grammar is super helpful and a great idea and really helpful! The quality is good, they have strong magnets and don't fall off the fridge even when the door is slammed. The only complaint that I have is that I wish the words weren't quite so tame and boring. I know it is for kids, but my boys are much more interested if they could make some sentences that sound gross or involve explosions, etc.

My son is 6 and he is finishing kindergarten in a month. I love that he has to read the words to make a sentence. After he spent at the fridge 20 minutes I asked him to write on a paper some of the new words that he used and he remembered how they spell. Great and super fun practice for those who began to read.

These are tiny phrase strips. Difficult for my six-year-old boy to handle (pick up, place, move) without constantly dropping them. Difficult for grandma to read (too small). The reading level is appropriate for MY six-year-old kindergardener, but his same-age and slightly older friends had difficulty with the vocab.

My kids love these magnets to create stories. I rated 5 stars because they are nice but I thought there would be more due to price. A little pricey for what you get.

Fun and educational! My granddaughter loves it and asks to play it frequently. We like to play on the refrigerator when I’m cooking dinner. I highly recommend it!