Family fun with Marble Run | Stay At Home activities for kids
The world is talking about only one thing at the moment, the Covid-19 pandemic. With many major cities on complete lockdown, it’s an unsettling situation leading to uncertainty and worry. We are all either required or advised to stay home for not just our sake, but for the health of everyone else as well.
As parents, we know that it’s hard enough to keep kids entertained during regular school holidays and this is an unusual and unexpected break for them. With schools closed, play dates restricted, outings to public places not advised, travel plans canceled, it inevitably leads to boredom and restlessness. If you’re working from home, it becomes even more necessary to make sure your kids are occupied while safely indoors so that you can focus on the day’s tasks.
This could be the best time to encourage some family-fun with VertiPlay STEM Marble Run because it's a great screen-free, STEM toy that's loved across ages. Win win! All it takes is one wall and all the imagination your family possesses.
This modular toy involves finding the most effective path for the marble to get to its destination through an obstacle course of ramps. Just stick it on a wall and get started! Here are three ways to make the most of the Marble Run to keep everyone entertained for hours!
Feel free to experiment!
The Marble Run is intended to encourage free play and has endless possibilities. It’s extendable and comes in different levels of difficulty so that as your kids (and you!) get more familiar with it, you can add new parts to it. This way, the path for the marble keeps getting longer and more challenging. Flip the ramps around, play around with the straight, bendy, see-saw and windmill ramps, move the hexagonal bases to make different formations and see what makes the best path for the marble. Raise the stakes by announcing a Marble Run contest and split up into teams. See whose marble reaches the destination first! You can get plenty of ideas here to get started and there’s more on our exclusive Instagram page.
Take it beyond the marble!
See just how far imagination can take you and turn the Marble Run into a whole new world! Try using craft paper and markers to create different landscapes that you can stick around the hexagonal bases, to create a little universe in which the Marble Run fits. Think of underwater themes, a LEGO universe or even Halloween that’s come early! Then ask your kids to dig through their toys and find animals, dolls and superheroes that can join in the fun. Imagine a marble racing behind a dinosaur that’s slowly plodding along on its small feet and Batman on a rescue mission! Or a monster truck carrying the marble and zooming down to its destination! There really is no limit to what you can do here and it just gives kids one more fun thing to work on during this period.
Make homework more fun!
With schools being closed, most children have online classes or homework to complete and keep them in touch with their routine. The Marble Run is a lot of fun, but it’s also a STEM toy and great for picking up basic science concepts like gravity, understanding how trajectories work and what the different angles of the ramps mean. It makes STEM less intimidating and more hands-on than typical classroom teaching. To keep your kids interested, download our free lesson plans centered around the different ramps. Each has practical applications and simple questions to increase curiosity and understanding. These lesson plans are an extension of what your child learns in science class at school so they could even help with their homework.
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