My kids enjoyed building scenes from Eric Carle's 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' and other classic children's books with these special Magna-Tiles

The Brown Bear set is designed to build exploration, and problem-solving skills, as well as recognizing colors and animals. With 16 square pieces, the design on the tiles ranges from a unique mirror piece — which my daughter loved — and a brown bear picture puzzle. Unlike other sets, this set doesn't have instructions for a specific build. That mixed with the color recognition makes it a good set for three-year-olds.

The Rubber Ducks set also encourages identifying animals, but adds in counting to 10. One side of the 18 tiles shows animal pictures from the book while the other side is yellow to construct a duck using the included instructions. The duck is one of the more difficult builds, however, and I had to help build the duck — even alongside my oldest.

The Very Busy Spider Magna-Tiles set includes 18 pieces and was one of my 5-year-old's favorites because of the barn and animal tiles. This set has several different build options, including a spider web and the barn, which also has working doors. The Very Busy Spider kit is designed to encourage identifying animals and sounds.

The 16-piece Very Hungry Caterpillar set, of course, builds a fun caterpillar. This is one of the sets that was a bit easier for a preschooler to build. The instructions for the build are listed on the cover and they are easy to follow. My bug-obsessed 7-year-old enjoyed rebuilding the lifecycle of a butterfly, but toddlers could also learn by counting the numbered tiles and fruit tiles.

This 16-piece set builds a moon with a ladder, but we also used the smaller pieces to show the phases of the moon and recognize different sizes. The opposite side of the moon build can be used to order pictures from the story.

With the pieces to put together a clock, the Grouchy Ladybug kit had activities that were also appropriate for my first grader. He loved using the pieces to build a clock, and I loved that he was working on math homework without realizing it. Along with telling time, the 16-piece set promotes sequencing and identifying animals.

The Eric Carle collection Magna-Tiles are fun and well-built. They left me with little room for complaint, but my biggest annoyance is the same for any building toy: Once the pieces are mixed together, it's a pain to sort them back out in order to build the specific sets again (and toddlers aren't organized enough to keep them separate). The toys are much more fun and creative when mixed together, but it now takes some searching to find the tiles for a specific book.

Most of the building instructions were also a bit too complex for my preschooler to handle solo. The instructions are simple white pictures on a blue background, and full-color instructions would be more helpful in identifying the different pieces. The instruction builds became mom-and-me activities, while creative builds were good for solo play.

Magna-Tiles also aren't a cheap toy. A set with less than 20 pieces costs $35 and buying all six — the most fun way to play with the tiles — means spending more than $200. Thankfully, you aren't paying extra for the book tie-ins; the Eric Carle collection is similarly priced to the original building toy.