Marble Track

The rugrats were getting bored and spending too much time on the Wii so we decided to build something instead. We had a bag of marbles from the dollar store and some hot wheel tracks. The boys didn't want to build another hot wheel track so we came up with the idea to make a Marble Track. We cut up some leftover tubes from Santa's wrapping paper extravaganza and got to work.

We tested our idea to make sure it would keep them rolling in there and then we got very ambitious in our quest to roll the glass marbles.

I couldn't have asked for better helpers. The boys seemed to get a little more enthusiastic after the first few marbles were rolled though, picked up steam and smashed into the walls. We had to fish marbles out from under every couch, table and bookshelf.

Dad was the chief engineer and tube cutter. Joshua kept smashing the track and Jonathan wouldn't share the marbles.

We decided to tape the tubes together on both side to make sure they stayed together. The challenge was finding the beginning of the tape and then picking at it until I could get enough edge to grab.

To make our track longer and flexible we added some hot wheel tracks and started it high on the couch. This enabled us to pick up speed and roll them all the way down to the front door.

We had a hard time finding them when they spilled out of the end so we put a bowl down there to catch them but they kept spilling out.

Our solution was to catch them in Dad's wooden shoes from Holland.

Tia joined in the new marble track maintenance as we could not keep Joshua and Jonathan from stepping on it in their excitement.

Marbles $1.00. Leftover Christmas paper tubes free. Two hours of learning and fun. Priceless.