What can you do with a bag of marbles and a whole bunch of left over wrapping paper tubes? Our prekindergarten kids figured out something fun to do and all we needed to add to the mix was a roll of tape…
You may be wondering where all the tubes came from. I actually collected them right after Christmas time from our local recycle drop off site. I get lots of snazzy classroom materials from that site like boxes and shoe box lids and this time I made sure to drop by a couple of days after Christmas and see if there just might be any paper tubes and there were bunches…
My prekindergarten class found the tubes set out on a table along with a roll of clear packing tape. We used the tape to connect the tubes together to create longer tubes…
I assisted the children in helping them tape the tubes together so they wouldn’t fall apart quite so quickly and once we had a long row of tubes put together we started on a new row…
The connected tubes stretched from one end of our classroom to the other end going up and over tables and chairs…
The children learned through trial and error that they had to position chairs strategically under the tubes in order for their marbles to roll from one end of the tube down to the other end of the tube…
The children worked in teams with some of the children at one end of the tubes dropping in marbles and other children at the opposite end of the tubes catching marbles in a cup. Â We started out without cups and marbles went shooting all over the floor so we learned that it was much better to catch them in a cup and they came out fast!..
The children took turns dropping and catching marbles…
After spending time exploring the marbles and tubes, the children also discovered that they could talk in one end of the tubes and listen in the other end…
But there was usually more talking than listening going on…
A wonderful morning of engineering and designing and collaboration and cooperation going on…
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