Marble Maze
In this lesson, children will design, create and test out a marble maze.
Learning Goals:
This lesson will help children meet the following educational standards:
- Develop beginning skills in the use of science and engineering practices such as observing, asking questions, solving problems, and drawing conclusions
- Develop and use models to represent their ideas, observations and explanations through approaches such as drawing, building or modeling with clay
Learning Targets:
After this lesson, children should be more proficient at:
- Expressing wonder and curiosity about their world by asking questions, solving problems and designing things
- Developing and using models to represent their ideas, observations and explanations through approaches such as drawing, building or modeling with clay
Step 1: Gather materials.
- Marbles
- Marble maze pieces
- Paper
- Pencils
Step 2: Introduce activity.
- During a large-group discussion, invite the children to share what they know about marble mazes.
- Ask the children to recall a time when they built a marble maze and talk about what happened during that activity. Did the marble maze work? Why or why not?
- After the children have all had a chance to talk about their experiences, talk about the importance of designing/drawing your ideas first.
- Then explain that they will have an opportunity to design, build and test out a marble maze.
Step 3: Engage children in lesson activities.
- Assemble the children in small groups and invite them to draw a marble maze that they can construct with the marble maze pieces.
- Ask the children to think about what the marble maze pieces look like, how they might fit together, and how a marble might roll on those assembled pieces. After this thought exercise, ask the children to draw their mazes while thinking about a path for the marble.
- After the children have drawn their marble mazes, invite them to build with the marble maze pieces.
- As the children are building, ask if the mazes look like their original designs. If not, ask how the mazes differ from their designs. Then ask them why they might have chosen to build mazes that are different from their original designs.
- After the children are done building, ask them to predict if their marble will travel all the way through the maze.
- Invite the children to test out their marble mazes and see if the marble goes all the way through.
- After all the mazes have been tested, discuss and analyze why some of the mazes worked and others didn’t.
- Invite the children to redesign their mazes and keep building during their free choice time so that they can keep investigating mazes.
Step 4: Engineering vocabulary
- Analyze: To examine information and draw conclusions
- Conclude: To make statements about what was learned after an observation or experiment
- Design: To create a plan for something that will be built
- Predict: To guess what might happen next
- Test: To try out an idea to see if it works or not
Suggested Books
- Iggy Peck, Architect by Andrea Beaty
- Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty
- What Do You Do With an Idea? by Kobi Yamada
Music and Movement
Outdoor Connections
- Create a maze with sticks, rocks, leaves, and other materials found in nature.
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