Rainy Day Fun: Reader Idea- Building Block Marble Maze

Our children, like many, love LEGO.  (To the point where I must confess that our oldest son has a few chips out of his teeth from prying apart pieces in a concentrated excitement of building….) When we saw this idea of a friend’s son we asked if we could share it.  I enjoyed the description that his mom sent with the photos of creation:

“I find it SO interesting that it was likely the iPad games and puzzles he plays that influenced/inspired this idea. And that he is applying the “digital” ideas/rules/consequences to an “analog” game. Didn’t it used to be the other way around back in the day?”

As parents we are always hopeful that there is a transfer of knowledge from the screen into a real life application and this was a good example of such.  

Our children quite liked this concept and built their own maze right away.  We were very grateful for O. in sharing his idea and sent him a “maze like” game that we are learning and that my former students used to love.  Have an idea?  We would love for you to share it with us.  

Materials

• Building Blocks (LEGO, Duplo)
• Building Plate (for your base)
• Marble

Directions

• On your building plate, create a maze.  Depending on the age of your child, you can vary the complexity.  This might include several routes to the end, dead ends etc.

• Put your marble in at your starting point and tip your plate to move it around the maze, trying to get it to the end point.

• O.’s mom told us that he included all sorts of details such as adding his little LEGO people and various accompanying rules (if your marble hits a person, back to the start…).  Thus, you can see that this activity has amazing potential for personalization and inventiveness.

Extensions:

• Why not create a maze for a friend?  Or work on a maze collaboratively?

• Could you map out an idea on grid paper and then transfer it into building?

• How do your designs improve with each maze?  What did you learn with each iteration?

Purpose

• Developing spatial sense.

Safety Notes

• Marbles and small building blocks can be a choking hazard and should not be accessible to children 0-3 or who tend to put things in their mouths.
• No one likes to step on LEGO or vacuum it up…be sure to clear your floor space (or use a table) when done!
• When our neighbourhood friends realized that our son had chipped his tooth (well maybe teeth…) on LEGO they brought by a handy separator tool made by LEGO.  Such a great idea!