The Gift I Almost Skipped: PicassoTiles Magnetic Tiles

I almost did not buy the PicassoTiles. It was a Tuesday in the fall, eight months ago now, and I was sitting at my kitchen table in Fort Worth with my reading glasses pushed up on my head, looking at a hundred piece set of magnetic building tiles on a screen and thinking that it looked like the kind of toy that lives in a closet for two years and then rides to Goodwill in the trunk of my car.

Here is what I knew about my grandson Eli at the time. He was four. He is loud the way four-year-old boys are loud, which is to say constantly and with real commitment. He does not walk into a room, he arrives in it. He had already outlived, in a matter of weeks, a robot that talked, a set of cars that lit up, and a puzzle whose pieces are somewhere under my couch to this day. I had a firm opinion about toys with batteries in them by then.

What tipped me over was Mia, who is seven. Mia does shows. She sings, she dances, she drags costumes out of the dress-up trunk in the grandkids' room and performs in my living room whether or not there is an audience. I thought that if there were a toy that let her build a stage to stand beside, and let her brother knock it down afterward, that would be a good use of an afternoon. So I ordered the PicassoTiles and I told myself not to be surprised if they stayed in the box.

They did not stay in the box. The set is one hundred pieces and the whole thing weighs a little over five pounds, small enough that I can carry it from the grandkids' room to the living-room rug without huffing. It came with an instruction manual, which I looked at once and set aside, because Eli had already turned the box upside down and started pushing two pieces together to hear the click.

The first Saturday, I got down on the floor with him. My knees do not love that, but I did it. And about four minutes in, I noticed he had gone quiet. Not silent, he was narrating the entire project, but quiet the way a child gets when his hands are busy and his brain is following them. He built four walls and a roof and then looked up at me like I had personally invented architecture.

He is four years old, and in eight months he has not once asked me for a screen while those tiles are out on the rug.

Eight months later, the PicassoTiles live on the bottom shelf of the grandkids' room, which means they sit at Eli's eye level and he can get them himself. That was the real test. Anything I have to lift down gets forgotten. Anything he can reach gets used, and this gets used every visit.

Mia builds stages. She will lay tiles out into a low platform, stand on the rug beside it, and perform, and the tiles become the stage and the scenery and occasionally the seating. When she is finished she does not want it taken apart, so it stays up until Tuesday and then I break it down myself and put the pieces back in the box. She has never once called it a building toy. She calls it her set.

Eli builds towers. Tall ones. Then he knocks them down, which is the actual point as far as he is concerned, and which is why I am glad these are plastic tiles and not something that shatters. He has dropped pieces, sat on pieces, and stepped on pieces in his socks. Eight months in, I have not thrown a single one away.

Two things I will tell you straight. First, a hundred pieces is a hundred pieces, and picking them up off a rug is not my favorite part of a Saturday. Second, the box says three years and up, and Sophie is two. She visits about once a month from Oklahoma City, and when she is here I sit on the floor with all three of them, because a two-year-old and a hundred magnetic pieces deserve a grown-up close by. When it is just Eli, the box is his to pull out on his own.

Sophie, for the record, stacks two pieces and claps for herself. That is her entire review, and it is a good one.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If we were at my kitchen table with the coffee going cold, here is what I would say. Buy one set, not two. A hundred pieces sounds like a great deal and it is exactly right for two children and one grandmother on a rug. A second set would mean two hundred pieces to pick up and one more thing to find a shelf for.

Keep it at your house. I feel strongly about this one. Mia and Eli come over most Saturdays and for a week each summer, and the PicassoTiles stay here, on the shelf, in the box. They are the thing we do together, not the thing that goes home and ends up under a bed. If your grandchildren live three hours away like Sophie does, buy it for your house anyway and let it be the thing they head for when they come through the door.

And sit on the floor the first time. Not because the toy needs you to. Because that first Saturday is when you find out what your grandchild will do with it, and it turns out to be more interesting than whatever was on your phone. I almost skipped this gift. Eight months and one loud four-year-old later, I am glad I did not.