What do you do when you’ve invited friends round for a civilised catch-up weekend and it’s a bit too cold to go out for a long walk with a toddler who has yet another cold? Oh and I should mention that there were billions of cardboard tubes in the house…
The finished marble run!
This is the tricky situation we found ourselves in this weekend when Roo’s godfather came to stay. Turns out that two frustrated ex-engineering students, an ex-railway employee and a 16 month old mixed with aforementioned cardboard tubes results in the most amazing marble run (we thought so anyway) and considerably less space to watch Sunday night TV (but who’d want to do that when you can roll a ball down several meters of cardboard loo roll instead)?! Click here to see a video of the final result.
You’d think this wouldn’t be so tricky for two engineering graduates!
Admittedly we (I) got a bit carried away with making novelty decorations for it…please note the awesome frog-mouth tunnel amongst other highlights and the daring curves of the armadillo banking bend demonstrating just how wasted my husband is at a desk job… Roo was a bit confused about why we would gasp in horror when she investigated pushing the support towers but thoroughly enjoyed putting the ball down the run once she got the hang of it.
Ball on final stretch down from the Frog’s Head tunnel.
I would thoroughly recommend starting a collection of old loo rolls, tinfoil, clingfilm and wrapping paper tubes right now – no children required although they do make a good excuse for releasing your inner-modeller. Also, as far as we can tell, there is yet to be an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for tallest marble run…if we get another very wet summer this year, guess what we’ll be doing!
The Armadillo banking bend .
To build your own marble-run all you need is some cardboard tubes, sticky tape and a small ball (we used a little rubber bouncy ball -marbles are not great for toddlers). Go on – get creative! And if you do, please post a pic to Baby Routes on facebook – would love to see them (and snaffle some good ideas for our next attempt!).
Drop from the top…
