Upgrade Your Magna-Tiles Collection With The New 'Sesame Street' Tiles

Magna-Tiles are one of those toys that really grow with your kids. When they're little, they teach concepts like color and shape, and as kids get older, they learn structure and geometry. And they last forever. The company CreateOn is making Magna-Tiles even more fun with their new Sesame Street Magna-Tiles collection.

The tiles will be available for purchase Aug. 3 and will retail for $40. The collection features all your favorites from Big Bird to Elmo to Oscar the Grouch, all perfectly color-coded to help little eyes not only learn their colors, but also some of their earliest sight words. The set includes tiles that can be formed to make a pencil holder, and another that acts like a puzzle for you to build your own Elmo.

We know that kids benefit from building blocks in myriad ways, however, recent research into just what is going on in children's minds as they play suggests that there is more to it than just learning how to build. An article in Trends in Neuroscience reported that playing with blocks (among other STEM open play) gives kids a special sort of spatial awareness that actually teaches kids to think mathematically, and therefore increases their school readiness. That means that when your kids are playing with the Sesame Street Magna-Tiles, they're not just learning their colors and having a good time, they're learning how dimensionality works, and preparing their minds to work around more complex spatial situations in pre-K, kindergarten, and all the way through high school.

And on top of being great for their brains, they're also great for parents. Not only will your kids play with these for extended periods of time without complaint, but because they all stick together, they are hard as heck to lose. And, when your kid isn't looking, you can steal one or two to use as refrigerator magnets. I'm not too proud to admit that I have my Elizabeth Warren bumper sticker being held onto my fridge with one of my kid's triangle tiles, and my mini PRIDE flag held by a rainbow tile. (My daughter actually did that one.) They're seriously the best toys.