Marble Bowling Game

DIY Marble Bowling with Pencil Eraser Pins

Last spring, we sold our home and moved into a larger home, which we actually purchased from friends. Their kids are older than ours, and so as they cleaned out items and packed, they ended up leaving behind a few things for the boys, including the game room couch (a sleeper sofa that was too heavy to move)! It worked out great for us! Well, one day, Aidan discovered a board behind the sleeper sofa. He thought that it looked like a bowling game.

He wanted to play bowling with it, and had the idea of using pencil topper erasers as bowling pins. I thought that was a pretty smart idea!

Marble Bowling Game

The family who made the board used circle shaped stickers to show where to set up the pins.

Marble Bowling Game

Aidan tried bowling with a marble, a large marble, and a bouncy ball, and discovered that the large marble works the best for bowling. It was too hard to keep the bouncy ball under control!

He likes to bowl by kneeling and tossing the marble just like you would a bowling ball, but it also works well to set the marble on the starting line and give it a good flick.

Marble Bowling Game

If you don’t have a board suitable for this game, I think it would work well to make the bowling lane out of posterboard and then just play with it on a flat surface.

Yesterday, Aidan and Dad had fun playing this game with real bowling scoring. Aidan is starting to hit that age where he doesn’t always know how to keep himself busy. If you have older boys to entertain (ages 8+), you might want to check out our ping pong ball shooters or paper plate marble track. We also recently had a lot of fun making Lego capes out of duct tape.

5 Comments

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  1. Eddie - The Usual Mayhem Jan 28, 2013

    Fun! My kids would like this one too.

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  2. Carla Jan 28, 2013

    That's awesome! I love it when kids invent their own games!

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  3. Katherine Collmer Jan 28, 2013

    This is so cool! So good for visual motor and visual skills too! Thanks for sharing it!

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  4. Kirstylee Jan 31, 2013

    This is such a cool idea. My oldest is probably still a bit too young to play this, but in a few years he will love it!

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  5. Abbajoy1 May 21, 2014

    Use this to informally teach how the "tens" family: if four are still standing, then six are knocked down because 4+6=10. (thus 10-6=4 and 10-4=6) Knowing the "tens" family really well is one of the most useful things in math when you later try to add and subtract two-digit numbers in your head.

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