Making playful devices to play with marbles
If you are of a certain age like me or even older you surely remember the popular marble games that were played in the streets, school yards, backyards and on the living room floors too. Whatever they were made (backed clay or natural clay, bones, stone and wood or the latest glass) the result is simple, not so expensive, playable everywhere with a lot of different ways to play. That's what makes marble games so widely spread across the world. Together with the games played on the floor children develop also "devices" to play with this rounded toys (the most popular are the Archbridge, the Snake or the Collection, or Bagatelle, or sand tracks).
Mainly and for the present workshop, I choose to transform cardboard boxes – especially those suitable to carry fruits and vegetables, all of them are easy to find outside any shop or supermarket, and they cost nothing.
Generally, cardboard is a recyclable material, easy to mould and shape. Usually it requires only glue and scissors to be transformed. So, this material has got all those qualities I like because is child friendly and accessible to everyone.
Gradually,
when participants are acquainted with the basic manual skills, some other materials will be added, reused, transformed. By this strategy the marble devices will become more complex like the mazes used in LABYRINTH GAMES. Consequently, it will be more challenging to make them and play with. These Marble Mazes in the box require special control from the player.
He orshe has to roll the marble through the maze, guiding the rolling sphere by tilting the box in their hands, possibly escaping from one trap and obstacle to the other. I personally saw children leave a part their GameBoy and keeping themselves busy for more than 20 or 30 minutes before to be back at their technological games.
Before seeing any decent results, this workshop has to be organised in 3 or 4 sessions, working with the same group. During each session the group will exert a new manual skill. The last two sessions will beleft for the more complex project.
A sort of program of the activities could be organised by looking at the required manual skills, which will bring the students to the level of being capable of operating independently, designing and making toys without adult control: 
- make edges or borders using coloured cards, gluing and folding them on a flat cardboard surface
- make bends at the edges and borders and glue them on a flat cardboard surface
- make a cardboard bridge and add borders, exploring the bend and the slope shapes of the bridge, together with the right direction
- make a tunnel using different materials
- reuse a soft plastic bottle to build parts of the track
- making a bypass for the marble
- making traps in the cardboard surface
- apply what is been learnt to design and make complex devices to play with marbles by using a cardboard box as a container.