This week we introduced two new activities: Marble Ramps and Gear Coasters.

Both activities incorporate spatial awareness, physics and gravity. As kids have experimented with both activities, they’ve noticed a few things. Marble Ramps and Gear Coasters both need their track pieces to be placed in certain ways in order for the marbles or gears to move about successfully. If the open holes in the tracks all line up, the marble or gear will fall right through without traveling on the tracks first. If the track pieces are level, the gear or marble won’t roll down. And, the bigger the slope, the faster the objects will roll!

*The gear will fall straight down when the holes line up*

Kids have been moving the coaster tracks around on a magnetic dry erase board in order to help the gears fall onto specific destinations. Similarly, kids have been moving other marble track towers closer or farther away from each other when utilizing a launching track piece. This piece looks like a swoop or a slide and allows the marbles to launch off of the track set up. Kids have been figuring out how to project marbles off of one track set up onto another tower of tracks nearby.

We’ve seen a combination of quiet thinking and chattering with friends to figure out how to arrange the marble and coaster tracks.