School-Age: Marble Runs

Since our Summer Reading Theme (CSLP 2017) is "Build a Better World", what better to build with than Legos?! And, on top of that, why not build Marble runs? So that is what we did this week.


1. Reading
We read "Billions of Bricks" by Kurt Cyrus. Not only is it a fun counting book that is about building but it incorporates bricks, which are basically what Legos are. So we tied it nicely together with our activity of the day.

2. Discussion
We had a short discussion about chain reactions and how marble runs can be a chain reaction through a series of obstacles. I brought up Rube Goldberg and the Rube Goldberg machine. I showed the kids some pictures and then began talking about how they can create their own complex Rube Goldberg machine's at home. I gave (and showed) them some examples of using wood, dominoes, paper towel and toilet paper tubes, and tape. 

Then I showed some pictures of Lego marble runs using pool noodles, as well as Lego maze marble runs, to give an example of what they were building today. 

3. Activity
We have a weekly program that uses Legos so I borrowed some of the materials that my Library Assistant uses at that program for our Marble Run program this week. She had used pool noodles cut in half with pipe cleaners to help lightly secure the noodles to the Legos.

Here are some pictures of our kids in the midst of building:

 

Same group as the one above but they found a way to use the pipe cleaners to secure their structure:

One of my favorites was a group that made a fairly difficult maze. All of the kids in the group LOVED doing their maze, even the older one.

4. Take Home

The largest take-home is that kids have ideas on how to be creative and BUILD at home. It may not be with Legos if they do not have them at home but I also gave them ways to use toilet paper rolls (which everyone has at home) and other scraps they may find at home. With the creativity and imagination of a child, anything is possible. 

I also allowed the kids to take one marble and one piece of pool noodle home. That way they already had some of the supplies they might need to build their own marble run. And I made a hand-out that the kids could take home that had pictures of different types of chain reaction marble runs or mazes they could build at home.

Notes:

The program went WONDERFULLY! The craziest and busiest time of the year, Summer Reading Program, is in full swing this week so we were packed. We have a registration system we use for sign-ups and we have, unfortunately, had to institute required registrations starting this week. In the past we have only requested registration but, with the numbers we're getting, there is no way my Library Assistant and I can manage many more kids coming to our programs. It is not a bad problem to have but we hate turning kids away. 

As for the program itself, it worked great to create bins of Legos to hand out ahead of the program. We made enough to have 6 groups total. That way, once we started the activity and separated kids into groups, we could call one kid up from each group to get their Legos and the Lego baseplate that they were using that day. It was highly successful and I would contemplate incorporating Legos into other programs in the future every so often to mix it up.