Taking magnetic tiles travelling: what works and what to leave home

Take twelve pieces, not the box

The instinct is to bring enough for a proper build. The reality of a tray table, a hotel bedspread or a train seat is a working area smaller than a tea towel. Twelve to twenty pieces is the right number — enough for a cube, a house and a small vehicle, few enough to gather up in one sweep.

Choose squares, a handful of equilateral triangles, two or three right triangles and, if you have one, a wheel base. Leave the specialist shapes at home, where they will not be lost.

Flights and hand luggage

Ordinary consumer magnetic toys are routinely carried in hand luggage. Very strong magnets in bulk are subject to air-cargo rules, but a child's tile set is nowhere near that threshold. If you want to avoid a conversation at security, pack them in a clear pouch rather than loose in the bottom of a bag where they show as a dense mass on the scanner.

Airline policies differ and change, so if you are carrying an unusually large quantity it is worth a look at your carrier's own guidance before you fly rather than after.

Where they work well, and badly

• Trains: excellent. Stable table, and vertical building against a window is a novelty that buys an hour.
• Planes: good, with the caveat that dropped pieces are gone until landing. A shallow lid on the tray helps.
• Cars: poor while moving — pieces slide off laps at every corner. Fine at service stops.
• Hotel rooms: the best case. A hard floor, a mirror and a metal door frame between them cover a whole evening.
• Restaurants: quiet, contained and does not need a screen. This is the strongest argument for carrying a few.

Packing so nothing is lost

A zip pouch that closes, not an open bag. Count the pieces in and count them out — a written number on a sticker inside the pouch removes the guesswork at checkout time. Do not pack the pieces your child would be upset to lose, because a proportion of any travelling set does not come home.

Keep the pouch away from hotel key cards and older magnetic-stripe cards in a wallet, and away from any laptop stored in the same bag pocket.

The best travel set

If you buy specifically for travel, a small 14-piece collection is close to ideal: complete enough to build with, small enough that its loss is survivable, and it lives in a bag permanently rather than being raided from the main box every time you leave the house.