Hobbies And Interests
Laybrinth
A labyrinth is a classic toy where the player manipulates dials on the side of a wooden box to tilt a board on its top left and right and up and down to steer a marble along a maze filled with twists, turns and holes. Labyrinths are great tools for building dexterity, problem solving abilities, hand-eye coordination and patience. The basic labyrinth game is very flexible, and variations, such as mazes modeled after golf courses and baseball diamonds, are available.
Plastic Marble Runs
Marble runs and races may be some of the most creatively flexible toys around. With a wide, colorful array of tubes, spirals, funnels, waves and sometimes gears and loops, the player can build intricate tower mazes to race marbles down. An especially creative person can even link these pieces up with Lego blocks, Tinker Toys, K'nex or other building toys to create elaborate Rube Goldberg devices. Marble runs teach creative thinking, engineering and physics by letting children explore what designs help them win the race or accomplish the task.
Wooden Marble Run
Wooden marble runs, such as the Wooden Castle Marble Run, combine the problem-solving and maze aspects of the labyrinth with the building components of the plastic marble run. By arranging and stacking carved wooden pieces, the player creates his own marble maze. Unlike the plastic marble run, however, these pieces are just stacked and placed next to each other, so there is no guarantee the maze will work or that the marble won't fall off it.
Archimedes Marble Run
The Archimedes marble run is a classic example of an innovative twist on the classic marble run. This contraption is a marble-filled Archimedes screw on the left side of a wooden frame containing a zig-zag marble maze. The player turns a crank to bring marbles to the top of the screw then lifts a gate and watches the marbles zoom down the zig-zag. This contraption can open an opportunity to teach physics, simple machines and even history -- the story behind the Archimedes screw.