Get Outside And...Roll! With Ramps, Tunnels & Balls

Scrap wood meets cardboard tubes meets ping pong balls in this fun and simple to set up outdoor activity and it's truly a match made in heaven (or at least a match made in the recycling bin)! Building and constructing larger scale marble runs outdoors is a great way to encourage STEM related skills in kids (and adults) of all ages using simple to attain and inexpensive loose parts.

We used a collection of recycled hard cardboard tubes a friend gifted us, some scraps of wood and broken down boxes and a basket of ping pong balls from inside. I told the boys they could also use whatever they wanted from outside and they both got busy right away.

Quite quickly, S discovered that our sidewalk is on a downward slope to the parking lot. He skillfully found things to use (with a little help with heavier lifting) to blockade the sidewalk...

Y loved throwing and rolling the balls down and even built some smaller scale ball runs. S worked on a larger scale, including a maze like setup that almost turned our walkway into a pinball machine!

The photos truly don't do justice to this activity, although I did get some video footage. It was so beloved by both boys that S spent most of the morning outside even while Y took a nap building, launching and building some more. They both had fun doing this again inside later on and with such a simple to set up activity at our fingertips, it's likely one we will repeat again and expand upon.

What else might you include? Water? Other materials? Different surfaces? The options are as vast as the imagination and as much as it's tempting to quickly join in and demonstrate, I learned a lot by watching what the kids were doing!

So this spring and summer, grab your recyclables and some ping pong balls and get ready to roll!

We'll be back soon and until then...

Happy Playing!