The Make-A-Fort innovation has been at the center of fun and fantastic playtimes in areas all over the world. The forts are incredibly entertaining and versatile, winning several awards from prestigious institutions in the industry.

Make-A-Fort had bagged the Mom’s Choice Award, the 2021 National Parenting Product Award, and the Tillywig Toy Award for Best Creative Fun. STEM.org authenticated this STEM wonder as an educational product, further proving its quality as an entertaining and educative toy.

Several national networks had also featured Make-A-Fort in their shows televised across the country. Stations like ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and NPR have all expressed their interest and curiosity in the highly entertaining and massively educational innovation.

The visionaries behind the Make-A-Fort novelty masterfully provide children with build kits that can become structures and vehicles – formations that bring hours and hours of fun. The beauty of each package that arrives with the Make-A-Fort is that the build kits aren’t limited to just one form. Imagination is the limit with these engineering wonders as it encourages children and their families to customize their forts however they like.

This article dives deep into the Make-A-Fort functionality, builds, and quality to help you decide which packages or kits are best for you and your little engineers.

The Company

With the dream of making the world a better place by providing young minds with toys that challenge them to be creative, Founders Kent Johnson and Troy Lindemann created an innovation that would broaden children’s imagination.

The creative duo hopes that, through their creation, kids and parents will find a way to bond and play together without using their phones or tablets. Johnson and Lindemann dream that toys that prioritize entertaining, educational, and creative play be available to the world’s children without the cost to the world’s environment, manufacturing each Make-A-Fort Build kit to be environmentally safe and eco-friendly.

Make-A-Fort Benefits: Educational, Creative, and Flexible

Many of you might think that building forts using pillows and blankets is no different from using actual creative building toys. To be fair, pillow forts are entertaining, too. However, creative building toys, especially Make-A-Fort, provide educational value and versatility that pillow forts simply can’t deliver.

Supports Physical Development

The Make-A-Fort is a fantastic STEM toy that broadens creativity and facilitates playtime that bonds parents and their children through engaging hands-on play. The building process lets kids explore and discover the many things that they can build with the pieces available to them. Actually helping with the fort-building improves their physical capabilities like fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Lifting the parts and holding them in place strengthens bones and muscles in their developing bodies as well.

Nurtures Social and Emotional Skills

Beyond physical development, playing and building the Make-A-Fort also enhances their social and emotional skills. The construction of the kids’ fort will open up a space for conversation and coordination. It allows kids to collaborate with each other and their parents to piece together the fort in their desired build.

Enhances Mental Capacities

The exploration and discovery of structures they can make and vehicles they can create spurs a mental exercise that builds their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Finding ways to fit each piece with each other in many different ways enables children to develop their spatial recognition. Working on fitting the pieces together is an exciting and educational way to exercise young minds and sharpen their mental capabilities.

Make-A-Fort Kits: Packages and Inclusions

Make-A-Fort provides parents and their kids with a variety of options to choose from when it comes to selecting the best kit for them. It often comes as a shock to customers when they realize how many things they can do with just one kit.

The Explorer Kit and Creator Kits offer discounts if you buy several kits in one transaction. Before choosing how many kits you’d like, make sure you consider the size of the play area. The bigger the play area you’d like to be, the more kits you’ll need. If you want to be more creative with the things that you build, consider the Creator Kit option that equips you and your kids with pieces that can broaden the range of things you can make with the pieces.

The Explorer Kit

The Make-A-Fort kits come in two different packages. The Explorer Kit is the basic package that comes with the following inclusions:

• 20 x S3 components (large squares each 23″ x 23″)
• 18 x T components (yellow triangles)
• 86 x C components (black foam connectors)
• 1 x Carrying Case (24” x 24” x 4.25”)
• 1 x Getting Started Guide 
• 1 x Children’s Product Certificate

The S3 components, T components, and C components are the building materials you and your children can use to build forts, tunnels, towers, and other structures you can imagine. The carrying case is a broad and durable box that can house the materials for storage and portability. A Getting Started Guide is also available to help you along the way.

Customers can buy several kits at once. The more kits you buy in one transaction, the bigger the discount you can get. You can buy one explorer kit for $87.99, two kits for $76.99, three kits for $69.99, four kits for $68.99, five kits for $59.99, and eight kits for $58.99.

The Creator Kit

Developers designed the Creator Kit as an expansion pack to the Explorer Kit, a package that widens the range of things families can create with the Make-A-Fort innovation. The Creator Kit elevates fort construction to a whole new level and adds versatility to the already inventive Explorer Kit by equipping parents and children with pieces that can create animals and vehicles like sharks, giraffes, and tanks. To serve its full function, customers will need to purchase one Explorer Kit to enjoy the Creator Kit.

The Creator Kit comes with several pieces that provide the Explorer Kit with even more versatility and allows more creativity in designing forts or other structures. The Creator Kit includes the following:

• 27 x R3 components (3 unit rectangles)
• 8 x R2 components (2 unit rectangles)
• 12 x S components (small squares)
• 8 x H3 components (3 unit hypotenuse rectangles)
• 4 x H2 components (2 unit hypotenuse rectangles)
• 4 x H components (1 unit hypotenuse rectangles)
• 4 X D components (diamonds)
• 4 x Z components (trapezoids)
• 6 x T components (yellow triangles)
• 86 x C components (black foam connectors)
• 1 x Carrying Case (24” x 24” x 4.25”)
• 1 x Getting Started Guide
• 1 x Children’s Product Certificate 

The R3, R2, S, H3, H2, H, D, Z T, and C components are differently-shaped pieces that help broaden the designs you can create with the Explorer Kit. The Creator Kit comes with a carrying case that can store all the components of the package for portability and storage.

Make-A-Fort Fun Factor: Is it Fun?

Think about how fun legos are. Then think about how fun it would be if you were able to play inside the castles you make. That’s how fun and creative Make-A-Fort is.

It combines the creative and educational fun of any building block or lego toy and the make-believe, pretend-play imaginative entertainment of playing house. One kit is enough to create the basic “Mansion Style Fort.” Designs are available on their website, so you can freely explore the structures you can make.

After exploring the designs available on their website, you and your kids can freestyle designs, exploring how the components can interact with each other.

Here are just some of the many things that you can build using the Make-A-Fort Build Kits.

Hexagloo X1

This igloo-inspired structure is perfect for arctic-based imaginative play. Children can retreat into this uniquely-design structure as they imagine a big chase with penguins and polar bears. This structure requires just one Make-A-Fort Explorer Kit.

Shark

With just a single Explorer Kit and two Creator Kits, you and your kids can create this shark structure that’s perfect for pirate play! This animal structure is big enough to allow the children to crawl into the tail and out its gaping maw. This build is their chance to wrangle with a great white during playtime.

Tank

Enter the fray with a tank in tow with this vehicle-designed structure. This fantastic tank build will have the kids playing for hours and hours, imagining themselves on the battlefield with their friends.

Aside from the fun of the building, children can also have fun with the structures they design in many other creative ways. They can explore another way of playing with the Make-A-Fort by integrating other toys with the structures they create.

For example, if they bring cooking toys or appliance toys into the fort, they can turn it into a game of house. If they have NERF guns or other similar toy weaponry, the kids can go on a nerf war or an imaginary game of knights and their castles.

Make-A-Fort Durability: Strong and Sturdy

For the Make-A-Fort Material, looks can certainly be deceiving. Each Make-A-Fort panel may look like your run-off-the-mill cardboards, but it’s much more robust than ordinary shipping box materials.

The Make-A-Fort panels are quality-tested to be durable and sturdy. Stronger upgraded cardboard manufacturers designed to be tough and robust make each of these panels solid and flexible. While it’s still not recommended to place heavy things on top of the panels during playtime, developers from Make-A-Fort put the panels to the test by placing bricks on top of the panels, demonstrating its rigid constitution.

In their testing, they found that their signature upgraded cardboards are six times stronger than any shipping cardboard, proving to be durable and sturdy for kids’ spirited play.

Perhaps the only weakness of the material used on the panels is water, as upgraded cardboard remains to be water absorbent. It’s also not the best idea to climb up on the structures as while they can support small, light trinkets; they certainly cannot support the weight of a human being.

Make-A-Fort Extras: Other Notable Features

As an excellent STEM toy, the Make-A-Fort package boasts numerous activities your child can explore. For example, while the primary function of the panels is to serve as the walls that make the forts and other structures, it also serves a secondary function as an art material.

Children can freely color the panels, designed with whimsical objects and characters, as the surfaces are not waxy at all.

You can also integrate other toys with the fort. After creating the structure, the kids can gather inside and create a light show they can enjoy. You can also have some fun with your pets by structuring a maze that dogs or cats can maneuver through for treats.

The Make-A-Fort is also famous for nerf wars as children can use a single kit to create mini forts that children can hide on as they fight for nerf supremacy.

Versatility is one of Make-A-Fort’s premier qualities. Paired with children’s imaginative minds, the sky is the limit for the viable activities kids can execute during playtime.

Conclusion: Amazing Across the Board!

Overall, the Make-A-Fort is incredibly fun and educational, offering a variety of ways to spend playtime. Each package includes an ample amount of resources to play with, providing more connectors in case of loss and need of an extra.

Even without the expansion packs or extra kits, there are still many designs to explore with just a single kit. However, if you have the budget, it is recommended to avail of the three-kit option as it provides you the most money and it is their best seller.

It is incredible how a toy can provide so much value for its price, and there are so many activities you can do with the resources the Make-A-Fort offers you.

The only potential weakness to this otherwise perfect novelty is the fact that water can still be bad for the panels. But even then, this weakness is overshadowed by the fact that the components are flexible and lightweight.

Make-A-Fort is an amazing innovation across the board and is deserving of the recognition it has received in the industry.

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Elena Jones

Hi, my name is Elena Jones, and my full-time job is a teacher. Through teaching, I have discovered that children learn in many different ways, and have seen the positive impact both STEM and Montessori toys have on children.

Through this site I hope to educate parents and adults about these toys, providing them with useful information on how they can be used, and provide some in depth reviews of different toys to consider too.

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