Marble Run
Friday, March 6th, 2015
We continued working on our Marble Run this morning and did it in stages and then demonstrated with a marble, whether our choice of container was suitable and whether the marble reached its destination. You can imagine how many times we had to do this as many of us wanted to have more than one turn. We placed our container which our teachers held, stood on the chair and dropped the marble and watched it. Sometimes we had to make adjustments 
but we were so excited to see the marble travelling along our tubes, down the transparent bottles etc. We actually made two marble runs and will attempt to make a third 
one. We decided to cover the Lego wall so that the tubes could adhere to the paper easily. The Lego wall is bumpy so it is not so easy for things to stick to it and stay there. We chose different colours of large cardboard and once these were on the board, we then started to attach the toilet rolls etc.
We will put many photos of our Marble Run making as it was a really intriguing activity for us. Sometimes when our tubes were at a certain angle, the marble didn’t run down it smoothly so we had to adjust it. Sometimes the marble bounced off the tubes or out of the bottles so we needed to make a 
shield. It was quite technical and together with our teachers we worked out how to solve the problems that we encountered. Now we know when we make the third one, how to put it together in the best possible way.
We have such a huge selection of recycled materials to use instead of toilet rolls so our third one will be full of
different shaped and coloured things. Vincent chose one of the boxes that he brought to school today which he said was “Charlie’s box”. The Marble Runs took a lot of time out of our morning however we still managed to do some table activities. One of our activities was again the recycled conditioner and corn starch play dough with glitter and water in a spray bottle. We did not actually 
play with this activity at all this morning. We did however spend time with Hisami talking about shapes, looking at the different sizes, the number of sides, their names and the colours on the cards. Some of the shapes were dark green and some were light green. We are starting to look at dark and light shades of colours as well as some unusual shapes e. g. crescent, hexagon, 
pentagon, octagon, semi-circle etc. We also noticed that while a triangle has three sides and three points, you can get different shaped triangles.
We still love to have time to play in the imaginative play area, dressing up and acting out roles. Today we incorporated some of the recycled junk art materials into our play as well as the bottle with orange liquid in it that makes a tornado inside. We played with blocks and animals on the mat as well and really 
enjoyed the day…… thinking, working out, problem solving, designing, observing, creating and experimenting. We love to do these things as they are all a part of our play, and how we learn best. We went to the park really late because we were working on our Marble Run for so long. We enjoyed time to play outside even though it was full. There were so many children from different schools, and we were all out at the same time.
Next week we will visit Venezuela which we are really excited about since none of us have ever been there. We want to thank our parents for their contribution to this week of International Month and to our teachers for continuing to present us inspiring exciting things to do in our class. Have a great weekend!
Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel