A child’s ability to fixate on something they have never had a chance to play with before, is one that has always amazed me. In this case, it was a marble track.
I’m not exactly sure when marbles entered our life, but they were immediately a treasure. J carries a small bag around full of marbles, but their purpose is only to be looked at and inspected, not played with.
Until he learned about marble tracks. From where? I’m not sure. Had he ever played with one? I doubt it, but it was still the top most wanted toy for quite a while.
We’re at the age where we are learning about responsibilities. Really simple things like teeth brushing and getting dressed, maybe feeding the dog. Each responsibility earns a gem. Those gems equate to money. We’re able to sit and pick something we want to work towards, and then I let him know how many responsibilities it would take to get there.
However, there are other lessons we’re learning about as well.
- Waiting for something doesn’t have to feel like living without.
- There are, almost, always alternatives.
I offered a temporary (free) solution. and J was onboard.
I don’t need to mention that I am not the first person to make a marble track using cardboard and tape, but it’s obvious that our current society doesn’t require the patience that it once did. It would have been easier to tell J that he had to ‘be good’ for a length of time, while using prime to get a relatively cheap marble track delivered to our door in a day or two.
The fastest way is a straight line.
But everything doesn’t need to be done the fastest way.
The conscious effort has to be made to slow down. Especially when it comes to buying things.
Step 1 Collect Materials
We are in no shortage of supplies at our house. We never seem to run out of diaper boxes and painters tape.
To start, I cut strips into cardboard, at all varying lengths, and each a few inches wide.
Other things that could have worked:
- Cardstock
- Plastic or paper cups/plates
- foam boards, poster boards
- and just about any kind of tape you have, although, consider the surface you’ll be using and whether or not the adhesive will be a problem
Step 2 Start at the end.
I wanted to give J and easy visualization of what we were working on. We have a huge blank wall in the living room. It’s on my list of things to figure out one day, but now it’s a good place for projects like this, and where we can put the Christmas tree.
I put a bowl on the ground where I wanted the track to lead and folded a strip of cardboard in half lengthwise. I used a few pieces of painters tape to press it to the wall at an angle that would drop a marble right in the bowl.
Then, I let J give it a try. Once he had the concept, he was invested.
Step 3 Build to the top
I let J lead here, I was around to rip tape and hold pieces while he positioned them. I only asked, where next?
Adding the second piece was easy, and watching the victory run of a marble that could pivot from one piece to another before landing in the bowl, was all the validation he needed.
This project lasted days! As he learned about angles and gravity, we built upwards and outwards. We ended with multiple paths and cardboard tunnels (paper towel and toilet paper rolls would have worked perfect). We dropped one down the track at a time, an we poured the whole bowl of marbles at the start and rushed to it back in place before the first marble was at the end of the track.
Occasionally, a pieced that worked for one run might turn into a bottleneck when multiple marbles dropped. Height became a competing factor. I brought our 6 foot ladder into the house so that he and I could take turns climbing up to add new pieces and drop them down.
Step 4 Let them tell the story
We put this together just before a family get-together at the house. For a brief moment, I thought about taking it down before everyone showed up, but there was way too much anticipation to show it off.
With family and friends all holding their breath, he climbed up the ladder and dropped a marble down. His face watched everyone’s expression while we Ooo-ed and Aaah-ed over the moments it went down the track. Then the celebration, where everyone cheered and told him how awesome it was.
He told them how we had worked on it. How we had made some mistakes and why those ideas didn’t work. He talked about adding more pieces to make it taller, and how this was just a J project, because E was too little for marbles.
Weeks later, we took the marble track down, and recycled the cardboard. J eventually earned enough gems to buy a plastic one and we spent about 30 minutes putting it together. I am completely honest when I say that it has spent most of it’s existence in his closet, on a shelf of things that little brother’s can’t play with.
Rarely, he takes it out and launches a few marble down. Nothing about it changes, and we don’t have pieces to build it bigger.
Just sayin.