Make a Roller Coaster for a Marble!
Monday, July 26, 2010 at 6:19PM 
We started a camp at reCREATE today called Labyrinths, Catapults and More! We have a week full of mazes, crafts and fun. Today the kids made their own Marble Runs. I love marble runs, but refuse to spend $40 to $100+ one buying an already made one.
The materials we used for our marble runs were:
- a flat pizza box for the base (you could also reuse a piece of foam core or other big piece of cardboard)
- strips of scrap paper and sparkly tape.
- some L shaped packing edges. (We cut these down to shorter lengths with a saw)
- paper towel tubes of differing lengths, pained bright colors
- craft paint for painting the background of the marble run (the pizza box)
- hot glue gun for putting it all together
- glitter, stickers, etc. for decorating
- two egg holders from an egg carton
We started by having the kids paint their flat pizza box.
Then we started laying out the marble course. We would glue down a new piece, test it, and glue down the next thing. We learned quickly, that it was more exciting if it went back and forth more than just straight down, right away.
Here is what some of the finished marble runs looked like:

And here is one in action!

