This month School-age 3 has enjoyed the thrill of racing. While outdoors races with peers is a bit slippery, they found out that our marble run set can be used for this purpose in a unique and creative way. Building the track is the first hurdle they had to get through. The magnets had to be placed in a way for the run tracks to be stable for many runs as well as large enough to get a proper race completed. To do this they had experimented with how tall to make the structure, how many squares and shapes it may take, and even finding out the number of tracks to use to keep it fresh while also keeping it familiar. Aaron, Liam, and Sophia Rose were amongst the main creators of these tracks, though they welcomed any other peer that wanted to join in the games. When it came to racing the marbles, each child chose a colour to represent themselves- Aaron often chose Blue, Liam chose Green, Sophia would choose Red, and others would pick between the left-over marbles.
They also got creative by making ranking stands to put the marbles in when they finished. There were designated boxes for sixth place to fourth place, and third place to first place- Sophia creatively called these boxes 'dumpsters'. Each place was decided by having the marbles race multiple times. The first race was to see which marble was the slowest at sixth place, then subsequent races happened for each ranking afterwards. When a marble fell off the track, it wasn't considered 'out', but given another chance by quickly placing it back all the way at the beginning of the race- it was surprising how often that marble ended up in a higher place than expected as the swirling bowl piece in the track brought forth unpredictable outcomes. Aaron created a mechanism that lined the marbles up in proper ranking without falling off the tracks- he did this by using a few of the transparent marble tracks as tubes, then added solid magnet blocks at the front and back- when it was time to have the marbles run the race, he tilted the front tile up, allowing the marbles to easily roll from the mechanism to the track.
There were times, however, that some iterations of the racing didn’t have all the rankings and instead only had a first-place winner while all the other marbles ended up in another magnet made 'dumpster'; this showed how cutthroat the competition can be in some of the children's eyes.
This activity has spanned multiple weeks now, starting at the very end of December when we were first gifted the set, and continued as we returned from Winter Break and throughout the month of January. The persistent use of the marble tracks and races shows how the children's learning of solid architecture, cooperation, and measuring length and width can be easily learned through hands on play. This also taught the children how to express emotions and behaviours appropriately as they had to learn how to win and lose their races with respect to the other players, and engaged in peer conflict resolution with one another if conflicts arose during their competition. With time, these race tracks have become more complex, developing towards a track that doesn’t stick or fling the marbles without intervention, and has continued to be more elaborate and creative as time passed on. We look forwards to seeing what other creative designs the children can come up with In the future, and what new rules they may decide on too.
