I always thought of marbles as an older child's game. That is, until my 2 year old saw a picture of a marble and said "What's that?" So I proceeded to explain what it was, how the game worked, and even pulled out my bag of marbles to show her.
She was fascinated. So I changed the game a little (or a lot) and made it a 2-year-old-coordination-friendly version. I can barely flick that thing the right way, let alone show Charis how to do it.
Here's the scoop:
Ages: As soon as you are sure the first thing they won't do is try to eat it. My 12 month old is too young. At 2.5 Charis is not ready to do this without supervision. I'll let that be your call.
Supplies: marbles (I have 2 large and a bunch of small), ribbon or yarn.
Directions:
Make a circle with the yarn or ribbon. Put all the small marbles inside. We talked about inside and outside. The object of the game is to roll or bounce the large marble and try to knock as many small marbles out of the circle as possible. We worked on being gentle, aiming, and getting a little strategy going. When she rolled/tossed/bounced hers, we counted the number of marbles she knocked out each time. Then we did the same with my marbles. She wasn't interested in keeping score, but rather just seeing how many she could knock out.
Skills:
counting, shapes (circle), hand-eye coordination, concentration, taking turns, patience
This proved (for us) to be a great lesson on taking turns. She so badly wanted to keep knocking them out over and over and made a disgruntled face each time it was my turn. :)
My 2.5 yo is also HUGE into marbles right now. I've discovered that placing a big fluffy blanket on the floor wiht a small board in the middle to actually play on keeps the marbles from straying too far and makes clean up a LOT easier!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the extra ideas!