Magnetact Animals: A Simple Kinetic Toy Kit for a Creative Online Workshop for Children

With the global COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2020, it has become difficult to hold workshops that bring people together in one place. Consequently, demand for online events and virtual workshops is increasing so as to minimize the loss of learning opportunities. However, providing an experience of building things remotely is not easy because of the time and cost of preparing materials and equipment, and the difficulties of distance teaching. So, we designed a kinetic toy kit that can be sent in an envelope, be constructed with ease, and work without any batteries. The kinetic toy, constructed using magnetic sheets, cardboard, and paper, allows the users to design and create “animals” with variable motions. At the two online workshops we held for 15 participants from 3 to 11 years old, all of the children enjoyed building toys and some participants invented original mechanisms and new animals. In this paper, we describe the details of the toy kit and the online workshops that used it.