Magnetic or Not?

I bought this awesome magnet kit for Meg a few months ago, and it's been sitting in my craft room, waiting for the perfect moment to introduce it. That moment came the other day when we were having a cozy at-home day.

I set the activity up by putting a number of the magnetic kit items (rods, disks, horseshoes, balls) into a basket along with some non-magnetic items from my craft room (laundry scoop, empty paper towel roll, wooden turning, empty glass baby food jar, seashell, piece of felt, etc.). I also offered two empty containers, a metal bucket and a woven basket, and some magnetic wands from the kit.

The metal bucket offered the extra delight of attracting the magnetic objects.

I did a lot more guiding in this activity than I normally do, so Meg could get the gist of what the magnets can do. We sorted the objects into the containers, touching each one with the wand and proclaiming it "magnetic" or "not magnetic." She caught on quickly and repeated the activity many times on her own, before moving on to exploring the magnets more organically.