Marbles!

One of my favorite child hood memories is playing marbles with my little brother, Riley. We had a huge collection of marbles. They were awesome. We had lots of little “mibs” and a bunch of big shooters.  We even had some made out of metal called “steelies.” When we would play marbles, it was all out war. We created bunkers for our marbles where they could hide out until they were used. And we had prisons, where we would keep the captured marbles. We even named our marbles. I remember there being one that was brown and a little bit transparent that I always named “root beer.”  All you need to do is take turns flicking a marble toward the other player’s marble. The first person to hit the other player’s marble wins that round and gets to take the other marble prisoner. Once some one runs out of marbles, the game is over and the person with all the marbles wins. Start with as many marbles as you want, depending on how long you want the game to last.

Another game that you can play with marbles is called, “RINGER”.  To play this game you need to make a circle on the floor. The bigger the circle the harder the game. Use tape or string to mark out the circle. Or you can just draw it into the carpet with a finger like we did in this picture. Pick on marble to shoot with and scatter the rest within the circle. Take turns flicking the shooter at the marbles within the circle. Try to knock a marble out of the circle. You can keep taking a turn until you fail to get one out of the circle, then it goes to the next person. You can keep shooting from where the shooter ends up. If it ends up in the circle, you can start from within the circle, unless the other player knocks it out. The person who wins the most marbles, is the winner! To see a cute video on how to play and the official rules click here.

 

Another fun thing to do with marbles is playing with a marble run. My great aunt Paunie used to have an old wooden one. You know, those tracks that you send marbles through. You can buy cheaper plastic ones that you can put together.

 

They are fun, but I think it would be a fun science experiment to have your kids create their own marble run track out of house hold items. The important thing is to let gravity do the work. You can use toilet paper rolls that are cut in half for tracks and tape them to a wall. You can also place these on a peg board to create a slant. You could also use PVC pipes to create the track. If you are really ambitious, make it go all over your house or use a pulley system. Watch this video below for inspiration:

You can get a bag of marbles a Walmart or and some dollar stores. Inexpensive fun!

Top picture: In flagrante Collecto