Pix Brix Review
In this Pix Brix review, we will show how Pix Brix offers a unique way for your children to transform their 3D construction concepts into reality. These award-winning puzzle bricks enable your children to pixelate their building ideas. These sets are truly unique and provide an activity the family can do together, or you can incorporate into your homeschool or classroom lessons.
We enjoyed one of the artist sets and the 1500-piece bucket of pieces. Our Pix Brix review is below, along with some FREE STEM activity printables.
Jenni and I both received Pix Brix sets. Pix Brix provided her sets. I did purchase mine. When I saw these on social media, read through their site, and spoke to one of the founders of Pix Brix, I then asked if we could review these. This is our honest review. We truly only review products we feel are quality and would be engaging and educational for students. (I have turned away review offers because I didn’t feel they were a good fit.) So, with that disclosure said, here is our review.
Don’t forget to enter the giveaway at the end of the review!
Table of Contents
What is so unique about Pix Brix?
What sets Pix Brix apart is its patented connection system that allows for 2D builds and 3D structures!
We built some bridges, which we could then attach to a Lego base, but honestly, the bridge was so sturdy due to the ability to connect each Pix Brix to another on multiple sides that it wasn’t necessary to attach them to a base then.
In this video, my 4-year-old is free building a snake, and my 10-year-old is working with the dinosaur set. You can see how adaptable these are for each age.
Pix Brix – The Nuts and Bolts
The Pix Brix sets are great for kids who like to follow step-by-step instructions to get to the final solution. The detailed instructions are perfect for every child six and older. We did the blue dinosaur, which was perfect for my dinosaur-obsessed 8-year-old.
Each set comes with detailed instructions with easy-to-follow instructions, all of the Pix Brix pieces needed to complete the set, separated by color, and the tool.
Before moving on in our Pix Brix review, I quickly want to mention the awards they have received:
- Best in STEM from Newsweek and STEM.org
- Mom’s Choice Award recipient
- They are a STEM.ORG Authenticated Educational Product
- The Toy Association accredited STEM toy
- A Good Toy Guide Recommended resource
- Best Art/Craft Toy from Autism Live
- Best Geek Gift from Pop Insider
The other artist series sets include The Mona Lisa, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, The Scream, and The Great Wave Off of Kanagawa. How fun to add these Pix Brix sets into your homeschool art and/or history study!
Before moving on in our Pix Brix review, I quickly want to mention the awards they have received:
- Best in STEM from Newsweek and STEM.org
- Mom’s Choice Award recipient
- They are a STEM.ORG Authenticated Educational Product
- The Toy Association accredited STEM toy
- A Good Toy Guide Recommended resource
- Best Art/Craft Toy from Autism Live
- Best Geek Gift from Pop Insider
Pix Brix Bulk
Pix Brix also come in bulk sets.
The bulk sets are for free-form building. They come in thirty-two colors and three palettes – dark, medium, and light.
The bulk sets allow for plenty of imagination! My children instantly knew exactly what they wanted to build. All three kids, ages 4, 8, and 10, had a blast building with the bulk Pix Brix.
Pix Brix Pixelator “App”
A super-cool way to use the Pix Brix bulk sets is to pixelate your photos (or your child’s drawings) and have the Pix Brix pixelating tool pixelate it for you. This tool will even give you a building “map” and a list of the brix to use in the build.
I do suggest using a very targeted part of a photo. We used the entire bee and flower photo pictured here, and the final design had over 13,000 brix. So, we narrowed it down after we uploaded the image to just a part of the petal. (We didn’t want to do just the bee because, well, we wanted pink!)
Our original photo.
The entire photo run through the Pixelator App.
A section of our photo with the required pieces.
Think of the ways you can incorporate this into a science, history, or literature study in your homeschool or classroom! For example, while on a nature walk, have your child take a close-up photo of something they found interesting. Then, run it through the Pixelator App and then build a model of it! Maybe it would be the photo of a butterfly wing, and you could follow up this building activity with having your child research the structure of butterfly wings, how butterfly wings are tagged so scientists can track migration patterns.
Or, if studying a famous person in history, take a photo of their face or a photo of something that symbolizes their contribution, run it through the Pixelator App, and build it!
Ways to Incorporate Pix Brix into Your Homeschool
Before I even received the brix to do this Pix Brix review, my brain was already churning up ideas for incorporating this building toy into science, history, and art lessons.
We have very kinesthetic learners, so resources like Pix Brix are always a hit.
We developed STEM challenges as a free download that incorporates Pix Brix. See the section at the end of this post for download instructions. Don’t forget to enter the giveaway!
But as we started building, so MANY ideas came to mind. Here are some ways to use this unique building set:
- 3D game design – Game design is a hot topic; many online tools help our kids code a game. However, having spent 14 years developing computer systems for DNA labs, including a lot of time coding, I know that you do not JUMP into coding an application or game. You have to plan. Like game design, there is a design phase and a storyboarding phase. Let’s say your child wants to create a game centered around a particular animal or character they think up. have them draw a picture and run it through the Pix Brix app to pixelate it, or check out the Pix Brix Pinterest boards for ideas and patterns, or have them draw their own on graph paper! Pix Brix are PERFECT for helping our kids think 3D and even do a “live” storyboard of their characters and sets.
- Prototypes for STEM challenges – The ability to build in 3D and three directions (horizontal, vertical, and diagonal) makes Pix Brix an interesting way for students to build a prototype of a creation. We have created 4 STEM challenges ready for you to incorporate into your science using Pix Brix.
- Hands-On Animal Studies – My daughter loves all things animals. When she was younger, she made a Jeopardy-like game using animal jr. field guides. We have raised everything from crickets to cats. Anyhow, there are lots of Pix Brix animal sets and patterns. Or use the pixelator tool and have it generate a pixelated version of your child’s animal drawing! (Here is the Pix Brix artic set, the wilderness set, and the farm set.
- Art history hands-on activity – Doing cut-and-paste art activities or art kits is not something that appealed to my son. In contrast, my daughter is all for the yarn, recycled plastic containers, glue, chenille sticks, and glitter to recreate the art of a famous artist. The Pix Brix artist collection is perfect for him! You might even want to photograph a famous painting and put it through the Pix Brix pixelator tool! That would be a fun assignment – research an artist and recreate one of their works with Pix Brix. They could even do this for a famous sculpture.
- Read Aloud Activity – Our read-aloud times typically involved someone hanging off the couch upside down, drawing, or playing with a robot action figure. It was just inevitable, and I didn’t fight it. So, I always welcomed a quiet activity that kept busy hands and minds busy while listening to a read-aloud or audiobook. Pix Brix are perfect for JUST BUILDING and creating. No agenda, no lesson plan, just good old imagination-using fun time.
- Build logic skills and do some offline coding activities – As a former IT person, logic was sometimes the bane of my job! (LOL) Strong logic and problem-solving skills are so important to systems design and coding. (But those skills serve us well in other areas, too.) We used our Pix Brix to design a 2D creation on graph paper, then had a partner make the build. To make it more challenging, use numbers for the colors, instead of coloring in each square—it makes it more of a mystery!
What We Like About Pix Brix
Pix Brix helped our children think in 3D and sharpen their spatial visualization abilities. Spatial visualization involves the capacity to envision and mentally manipulate two or three-dimensional images, enabling three-dimensional thinking.
Pix Brix are an excellent tool for helping our children build those mental abilities by physically building a 3D model first. A 2009 study by Wai, Lubinski, and Benbow showed that people in physical science, math, computer science, and engineering had the highest spatial ability scores.
The builds are sturdy! Don’t get me wrong, we have enjoyed other building sets (remember Tinker Toys?), but Pix Brix is the first building toy we have that is very STURDY! It’s difficult for the builds to fall apart.
The sets make a great family activity, and it’s so fun that the finished project can be displayed on the wall!
Tips for Using Pix Brix:
- As mentioned, these brix are STURDY. This can make them difficult to take apart. You have to slide them a little bit to get them apart. Little hands may need help.
- These are small, so it’s easy for them to get lost on the floor, so you might want to consider having some plastic containers. (We washed out a plastic 18-egg container (from Costco) and used it. We also used some recycled yogurt containers.
- Your youngest builders may need to practice sliding the bricks on and off. But use the tool that comes with the sets. If you buy a bulk set, you want to grab one of the tools.
Final Thoughts
All ages will find Pix Brix engaging; my 8-year-old daughter said, “For Christmas, I want all the colors to build everything. I wake up every morning thinking of everything I could build!”
I like that it’s versatile in that we can follow instructions on a set, make our own with their online app, or plan our designs with graph paper and bring them “to life!”
I challenge you to have your kids create designs with graph paper and then put them together. As a former coder and systems designer, I know this step-by-step planning helps build logic skills. Pix Brix makes an excellent resource for offline coding activities. (See our four free STEM challenges you can request below.)
The boundless playtime and creativity these blocks offer our children earns Pix Brix a solid A+ rating.
Where to Purchase and How to Connect with Pix Brix
Check out the Pix Brix website to read more about their sets and watch videos.
Check out their Pinterest boards; there are so many building ideas! (But we know your children will have their imaginations sparked once they open their first set of Pix Brix and create their own awesome builds!)
Follow them on Facebook and Instagram too!
Download 3 FREE STEM Lessons with Printables
About the reviewers: Jenni is a homeschooling mom of three. She loves trying new products and sharing their experiences. Michelle is a veteran homeschooling mom of 2, and the owner of The Homeschool Scientist.
