How to play:
Snap pieces together to create the marble run. Drop marbles on the track to watch them roll their way to the bottom!
Recommended Age:
4 years and up
Benefits of Playing with Marble Runs:
Marble runs help children with a variety of developmental and functional skills. They can be used in occupational therapy as a therapeutic activity as well as at home to further develop these skills while having fun!
- Bilateral coordination skills
- Marble runs help develop bilateral coordination skills as children snap pieces together and take them apart using both hands
- Fine motor skills
- Fine motor skills are challenged as children pick up marbles, as well as assemble and disassemble the track
- Picking up the marbles helps children practice the pincer grasp (picking up small objects with the thumb and index finger) or the three jaw chuck grasp (picking up objects with the thumb, index, and middle finger pinching together)
- Children practice in-hand manipulation skills while picking up multiple marbles at once and transferring them from the palm to the fingertips
- Hand and finger strength
- Marble runs help build children’s hand and finger strength as they push together or pull apart pieces of the track
- Upper body strength
- Upper body strength, especially arm, shoulder, and upper back strength are worked on while playing with marble runs as the children lift their arms up to assemble the track and lift their arm to place marbles at the top of the marble run
- Hand-eye coordination
- Hand-eye coordination (coordinating eye movement with hand movement) is challenged as children assemble the marble run
- Visual tracking
- Children visually track the marble as it rolls down the curves, spirals, and zig-zags of the track
- Motor planning
- Marble runs help children develop motor planning skills as they conceive, plan, and carry out motor movements required to assemble and disassemble the marble run
- Visual perceptual skills
- Visual perceptual skills are challenged as the child must figure out which direction to place pieces of the track, whether the pieces are upside or right-side up, or which piece will fit between two pieces of the track
- These skills can be further challenged by copying examples of marble runs in the instruction manual
- Following instructions
- If the child is copying an example from the instruction manual, they must follow multi-step list of instructions
- Problem solving
- While building the marble run, children practice problem solving by figuring out which pieces of the marble run fit together and how to fix the track if the pieces are not initially fitting together in the right way
- Social skills
- Children work on social skills, including sharing and teamwork, by working together to build the marble run
- Emotional regulation
- If the marble run falls over or your child is having difficulty figuring out how to fit the pieces together to make the track they way they would like, emotional regulation skills may be challenged
*Marbles are a choking hazard, so please supervise your child if they are under 3 years old or if they mouth objects
