“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
George Bernard Shaw
Marbles: so many things you can do with just a small object. Here we are going to share an engaging STEM activity and an art project as well!
Marble Runs
A really neat project for rainy day, is to gather some recyclables and make a marble run! We used egg cartons, toilet paper rolls, paper towel rolls, and a big piece of cardboard to make ours. (And lots of tape!). You can help the kids with the design like making some suggestions… “How can we make sure the marble doesn’t roll off the edge?” or “Where is the marble going to go next?” It also helps to cut the egg carton or paper towel roll in half.
The kids played with the marbles for a long time. Then, to make it educational, I talked with the girls about how we could possibly make our marble go faster down the run. How could we increase the rate of speed? They realized that the higher than angle of the cardboard, the faster the marble would go! This is a great branching off point to talk about acceleration with an older child.
Paint with Marbles
Art is not really my specialty, but my children LOVE it, so I try to fit in some cool projects that don’t require a lot of art talent from me! So, we found another use for our marbles by doing marble painting. It’s super easy to set up and doesn’t require you to be a crafty mom.
First, you find a carboard box, and you either fold down or cut off the top flaps. Then you need some type of container for the paints. We used ramekins. Small bowls would work as well. We picked a few colors and put them in the ramekins. Then the girls added a marble or two to each color, and we rolled the marbles around in the paint.
Next, we placed the marbles in the box. We used some small plastic tweezers that we had, but your hands would work fine. You could do one at a time, or a bunch at a time!
The girls rolled the marbles around in the box to make some really need splatter patterns. Some of the marbles needed a second coat of paint before rolling them around again.
And voila! marble painting project complete! What cool activities have you done with marbles? Stay tuned for our unit on Force. And if you missed our last unit, check out what we learned about bugs!