Marble Mania. Math and small motor activities for kids from preschoolers to school age
My little adorable toddler, the Big Button, is busy sifting marbles to and from. Clickety-cluck. The door bursts open and his older brother, Smiles, rushes through the door. The daily explosion of greetings and hugs is cut short as he notices the colorful marbles, spoons, tongs and ice cube trays: he is heading straight for the marbles. Except he is in elementary school, just pouring and color matching is not good enough! Well, this list of activities was keeping him so busy, I had a chance to make a soup in a process…
While his baby brother was busy with his set of educational marble activities (Head Full of Marbles. Great sorting activity for preschool kids.), my early schooler get right to work.
Marbles Transfer
Leaving spooning marbles from one plate to another to his baby brother, he found this activity both challenging and fun, clickity-clacking the marbles from one place to the next quite a few times.
Supplies:
multicolored marbles or other small objects in a little bowl
plastic bottle with a mouth that is wide enough to fit a marble, narrow enough to make it challenging.
Optional: spoon, tongs – some fun tool for moving the marblesDirections:
One by one, transfer the marbles from the plates to the bottle.
Matching Number of Marbles
Supplies:
multicolored marbles or other small objects in a little bowl
little six muffin baking pan, dividing plate or an ice cube tray
cards with numbers 1-6
Optional: spoon, tongs – some fun tool for moving the marbles over from plate to plate
Directions:
Lay the cards with numbers next to each of the muffin pan cell.
Place 1 marble into the muffin cell with number 1, 2 marbles into cell with number 2, 3… with 3… you got the idea. Until you have six. Or twelve – depending how many sections you have for your marbles in your tray.
Check each cell and place there your number!
Cool Marble Math!
Once the our kid is too smart for cards (or if you just don’t have any, do not feel like making such cards), we found a way to bring more challenge and fun!Supplies:
multicolored marbles or other small objects in a little bowl
little six muffin baking pan or an ice cube tray
flash cards with addition/subtraction OR
dry erase board and a marker
Optional: spoon, tongs – some fun tool for moving the marbles over from plate to plate
Directions:
place your ice cube tray on top of dry erase board
use a marker to write how many marbles go in each cell.12 into cell 1, 2+5 into cell 2, 14-7 into cell 3…
let your kid fill in the resulting marbles!
Lego Marble Run
Math is done, transferring is definitely over, time for some fun. That is educational fun, where logic and spatial thinking get some exercise.
Supplies:
One marble ball. Round.
Lego base board (wide and lengthy board that is often included to be the base of the project)
A few pieces of legos.
Directions:
With the lego pieces you have, let your kid build a maze
Traverse the main maze pathway with the marble ball. It is usually hard and awesome!
Believe it or not, I have more ideas. Some of them we already did ( And I’ll keep them coming. And if you have in mind some more fun things to share about it, please share them too – I am always on a look out for new fun and educational projects!
Directions:
One by one, transfer the marbles from the plates to the bottle.
Supplies:
Directions:
Directions:
