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Preschool Physics Activity– Building Marble Tracks with your Preschooler

Teach your preschooler about basic preschool physics topics by building easy and fun marble tracks using marbles and pipe cleaners. You’ll be teaching your preschooler about gravity, motion and friction with this easy preschool physics activity.

See pictures of the marble tracks my sons and I created in my preschool science and nature blog.

What your Preschooler will Learn from Building Marble Tracks

About gravity

About motion

About friction

Building basics

What you will Need for Building Marble Tracks

Marbles

Pipe cleaners

Building blocks or large Lego’s

A washcloth

Tape

Plastic wrap

What To Do

Step one: Build a marble track with your pipe cleaners and blocks for your marbles. You will need two pipe cleaners on each side of the marble track. You’re creating a track for them. It helps if you tape your pipe cleaners down to the ground so the marbles don’t dislodge them, but you will need to make sure the tape won’t halt the marbles’ progress. A little bit of tape will go a long way with this.

Step two: Create a slide using two pipe cleaners, your plastic wrap and Lego’s. Wrap t plastic wrap around the pipe cleaners for the best effect. Again, a little will go a long way. To see a picture, check out my science and nature blog.

Step three: To illustrate friction, try building your pipe cleaner track across the washcloth. Push a marble across it and show your preschooler how much the washcloth slows the marble down.

Step four: Have some fun with this. Build tracks across your kitchen table, across your kitchen floor or wherever you can imagine. Let your preschooler play with the marbles and pipe cleaners. The tracks they build won’t work perfectly, but they will get the idea of the process. While your tracks won’t work perfectly unless you have a degree in engineering, your preschooler will have a lot of fun just building the tracks and they will get a basic understanding of preschool physics topics.

Helpful Tips

Use larger marbles, rather than smaller marbles.

You may find your tracks work better if you cut your pipe cleaners in half.

The less your pipe cleaners have been played with and the straighter they are, the better your marble tracks will work.

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