Turn a Cardboard Box into an Epic Marble Run

 Use cardboard, craft sticks, and hot glue to create an epic marble run!  The marbles land in paper cups at the bottom of the track.  This is a fantastic engineering challenge for kids.  How should we position the sticks?  Which path will the marbles take?  How many will land in each cup?

 As always, make sure that the kids playing with the marble run are not putting the marbles in their mouths!


We started with cardboard sheets , craft sticks, scissors, hot glue, paper cups, and duct tape.

We taped strips of cardboard to the sides to keep the marbles from rolling off.  I cut the rims off the cups before gluing them to the cardboard so that the marbles would roll smoothly into the cups.

Then we glued craft sticks to the cardboard with hot glue.  We did two sections with little short sticks to make it sort of like a pinball game.  We weren’t sure how much of an incline we were going to want for our marble run, but leaning it against the couch worked perfectly.

And of course someone had to pour the whole bucket of marbles down at one time to see what would happen!

From FrugalFun4boys.com

How strong is spaghetti?  Challenge kids to invent a way to find out!  This STEM challenge is a lot of fun, and you won’t need much in the way of materials!

Here are the materials we used:

* 1 package of spaghetti

* 2 sheets of styrofoam – purchased at Hobby Lobby

* Books

* Wooden blocks

We started our project by investigating how much weight spaghetti can hold when it’s vertical.  We quickly discovered that spaghetti is not very strong!  It bends very easily, and breaks easily.

I asked the boys if they thought multiple pieces of spaghetti could hold more weight, and possibly even hold up a book.  We tried sticking about 20 pieces of spaghetti into the styrofoam disk.

We decided to see if the spaghetti could hold up our large history book, and of course it could not…

We tried again with our test, and used LOTS of spaghetti.  I can’t remember how many pieces this was, but I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 200.  One of the challenges of balancing weight on top of spaghetti is that it bends and sways very easily!  We had good success putting another piece of styrofoam on top of the spaghetti, and then adding weight on top of that.

We were able to get 6 board books on top of the spaghetti!  Not a ton of weight, but hey – it’s spaghetti!

Then we devised a second test to investigate the strength of spaghetti when it is lying down horizontal.  Aidan built a small bridge out of blocks and laid the spaghetti across the bridge.  We were able to pull the spaghetti out of the styrofoam and use the same pieces.

Aidan put blocks on top of the spaghetti on each side to hold it in place.  Then he started adding weight in the middle.

Surprisingly, the spaghetti held a lot of weight!  I figured that it would be stronger this way than standing up vertically, but it was stronger than I thought it would be.

As Aidan added more weight to the center, he had to add more weight to the sides to keep the spaghetti in place.

See if you can try this experiment out? Can it hold more?

How to Make a Kite

Materials for Making a Kite

* A full sheet of newspaper

* Two 60mm round wooden dowels (one 60cm, one 50cm)

* Scissors

* Pencil

* String

* Masking tape or packing tape

* Ruler or yardstick

* Yarn and/or ribbons

* Little handsaw 

Directions for Making a Kite

1. Start by cutting your wooden dowels to the correct lengths-

2. Use your handsaw to make notches in both ends of your two wooden dowels. (For safety reasons, I did this myself.)

3. Lay the 60cm dowel vertical and measure 1/3 from the top. Mark it with a pencil. Place the smaller dowel across this mark to form a ‘t’ shape. Use your string to wrap the dowels together where they meet. Pay attention to the notches at the end of each dowel. You’ll want them all parallel to the floor your sticks are on so that you can later wrap string around the frame.

Place some masking tape over the string to secure your dowels.

4. Wrap string all the way around the kite, making sure it goes right into the notches. 

Now that your frame is done, it’s time to add your newspaper. (You can also use a plastic trash bag.)

5. Place a large sheet of newspaper on the floor. Place your frame on top of it. Cut about one inch outside the frame to make your newspaper the same shape.

6. Fold the edges of the newspaper over the string and tape them down securely 

7. Cut a piece of string 60cm long. Poke holes into the top and bottom points of the kite. Tie one end of the string into the top hole and one end into the bottom hole. (Use some tape to keep it secure.) This is the brindle of your kite. Tie your flying string to this brindle string to fly your kite. (We started by tying the string about 1/3 of the way down the brindle and adjusted it as we flew our kite.

8. Use ribbon to create a tail for your kite.

Now you’re ready to go kite flying!

https://www.kiwico.com/diy/Science-Projects-for-Kids/3/project/Window-Greenhouse/3003