Design a Marble Race

Materials:

• Marbles (or Ping-Pong balls)
• cardboard tubes
• Paper or other targets (optional)

All your kids need for a day at the races are some marbles and cardboard tubes. Use a hallway or room with a wooden or linoleum floor for the racetrack. Have your children hold one end of the cardboard tube in the air while keeping the other end on the floor to form a marble launching "jet-way." Each player simply releases the marble at the top of the tube to send it on its way. (Supervise closely if young siblings are watching the play. Also, if young children are playing the game, try using tubes that are large enough to accommodate Ping-Pong balls.)

The simplest race is to see who can get a marble across a finish line first. Your children can make the race more challenging by including a simple target at the finish line (say, a small piece of folded paper standing on edge). Or, they can try to have their marble stop as close as possible to the finish line by raising or lowering the ends of their tubes to control the speed.

Players ready? Marbles ready? They're off!

More on: Games for the Whole Family

Excerpted from:

© 2005 by Steve and Ruth Bennett. Excerpted from 365 Unplugged Family Fun Activities with permission of its publisher, Perseus Books Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

To order this book visit perseusbooksgroup.com.