Marbles

When searching our basement for some Halloween decorations, we stumbled upon an old collection of marbles. Caleb was fascinated by them and was eager to bring them upstairs to explore. We decided to place them on our light table in order to see them a little more clearly. 

The light from the table illuminated the marbles, showing off their variety of colours and highlighting the embellishments found within. They were quite beautiful! Caleb noticed the colours and was eager to point out to me the ones he recognized. He also sorted the marbles by colour and size and described his favourites.

The smooth surface of the light table was also perfect for spinning and rolling the marbles and Caleb enjoyed flicking a few at a time and watching them ricochet off of each other. It was interesting to observe this 'cause and effect' game that he had created.

Finding the marble collection just proves that it doesn't take expensive games or elaborate activities to encourage discovery, creativity, problem-solving, and rich opportunities for oral language. If we trust young learners with a variety of interesting materials, they will teach us about the possibilities!