Explore our catalogue of award-winning activities and games

Busy Things hosts over 1600 curriculum-linked activities and games for early years and primary aged children. A school subscription also includes lots of features and tools for teachers that promise to save planning time.  Take a free trial to have a proper play or book a demo here. 

Pretty Things: Busy blocks

Touch and hold (or click and hold) and watch the blocks fall to the ground. Use magnets, repellers, ramps and propellers to move the blocks around the screen. Explode a bomb to shake things up! Click the buttons in the top left to save, load and print your creations!

You can use this activity with the other Pretty Things activities for even more amazing results! In the left-hand margin are other works you have made during the session. Choose one to open it in the canvas area and work on top of it. NOTE: These will not be saved automatically when you finish your session on Busy Things.



Teaching tips:

Age 3-4, Age 4, Age 5Age 5-6, Age 6-7Age 7-9

Let children get creative by exploring and experimenting with the buttons on the right side of the screen.

Link this activity to mathematics by encouraging children to name and count some of the 2-D shapes on the screen. You could ask them to make 5 squares, 3 triangles etc.

Pair this with ‘Shape up’, ‘Shape shuffle’ or ‘Tangranimals’ to promote more discussion around 2-D shapes.
This activity could be used alongside ‘Name the shapes - 2-D shapes’, ‘Shape up’ or ‘Tangranimals’ to get children naming and recognising properties of 2-D shapes.

Alternatively, use as a link to early forces work by using the ramps, propellors and magnet features to see the effect they have on the shapes.
Support work on forces and magnets by getting children to experiment with the magnet and propeller features. They could see the how the magnets both attract and repel objects.

Children could follow this using real magnets to sort materials which are magnetic and not magnetic or looking at strengths of different magnets and how they might be used in everyday life.
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Nursery

 £110+VAT yr

  Unlimited children in a single nursery

  Single shared login

  xx games for independent play

  Areas of Learning?

  Printable worksheets

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FREE TRIAL

Your free trial includes

  • access to 1600+ of fun educational activities and games
  • Create an area just for your class (school version)
  • Track activities and send feedback (school version)
  • Customisable games and activities targeting core maths, literacy and phonics skills
  • Creative activities working with colours, shapes and sounds
  • Busy Code - a whole suite of activities and guides for teaching children how to code
  • A custom phonics and maths worksheet maker
  • Curriculum-links and activity search
  • Pupil timelines - see what your pupils have been doing
  • Set assignments and collate results
  • Play on desktop computers, laptops and tablets

 

Schools

Schools have no limit on the number of pupils that can use Busy Things simultaneously. 

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Families 

The family version allows up to 5 children to play at once.

 

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