Use cardboard, craft sticks, and hot glue to create an epic marble run! The marbles land in paper cups at the bottom of the track. This is a fantastic engineering challenge for kids. How should we position the sticks? Which path will the marbles take? How many will land in each cup?

As always, make sure that the kids playing with the marble run are not putting the marbles in their mouths!

Build an Epic Cardboard Marble Run

Aidan and I built this marble track, and then the younger kids have been enjoying playing with it. Owen was going to help us, but he got distracted building castles out of the extra paper cups – very typical!

Want to see it in action?


We started with cardboard sheets that my husband had cut from our IKEA sofa box. Then all we needed were craft sticks, scissors, hot glue, paper cups, and duct tape.

Epic Marble Run

We taped strips of cardboard to the sides to keep the marbles from rolling off. I cut the rims off the cups before gluing them to the cardboard so that the marbles would roll smoothly into the cups.

Epic Marble Run

Then we glued craft sticks to the cardboard with hot glue. We did two sections with little short sticks to make it sort of like the Plink-O game. It worked great! We weren’t sure how much of an incline we were going to want for our marble run, but leaning it against the couch worked perfectly.

Epic Marble Run

We put our ottoman behind the couch for the younger ones to stand on, and they had a great time sending marbles down the track. Janie and Jonathan worked together for a long time loading up the container, then sending them all down, then loading up the container again.

Epic Marble Run

And of course someone had to pour the whole bucket of marbles down at one time to see what would happen!

Epic Marble Run

Even though we felt like our sticks were evenly spaced, the cups at the bottom told a different story! You can see that the red sticks at the bottom diverted marbles away from the fourth cup.

Some marbles did roll between the cups. We had little balls of tin foil blocking the holes, but Janie was very bothered by them and pulled them all out. Just know that that is an option! Cotton balls would probably work well too.

Epic Marble Run

I would love to try this project in a classroom setting with different teams of kids building their own track! Hmm, maybe I should think about that at our church’s homeschool co-op…

We love marble runs! Here are some of our other favorite marble runs to build: The BEST Marble Run Projects for Kids

9 Comments

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  1. Tracie Jun 24, 2016

    This truly was an epic marble run in a box! With the great description, this was a fairly quick and easy activity for the whole family, ages 4 through 50!!!! We did add some good old American competition to the run, however, as my husband added point values to each cup. Each person was then given 5 of the same colored marbles and was only given points if the marble landed IN the cup! We tallied each round so there were multiple winners.... the kids went to bed asking if we could plan again tomorrow! That scores a two thumbs up in our book! Thank you so much for sharing!

    Reply
    1. Sarah Jun 25, 2016

      Oh that's a fun idea to add point values to the cups! Thanks for your kind comment. :-)

      Reply
  2. yula Jul 2, 2016

    You've got such creative and lovely ideas! Making such great games and activities with so little is truly inspiring!

    Reply
  3. Simaran Singh Jul 12, 2016

    Awesome Game for KIDS and the most important part is that it costs nothing. It is an easy and cheap DIY. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
  4. Theresa Jul 27, 2016

    This is terrific . Did the sticks stay glued down? I will be making one on Monday with the Grands. Thank you for the great project

    Reply
  5. Jessica Aug 2, 2018

    This is such a cool idea! I love it! I am putting together a blog post on my blog, candleinthenight.com, about different marble games and was wondering if you would allow me to include an image from your post with a link back to your site. Thanks in advance!
    Jessica

    Reply
  6. Rebecca Mar 24, 2020

    Oh, I wish I did this when I was teaching. The physics, the timing, the math....oh so much fun!!!!

    Reply
  7. Mona Apr 24, 2021

    You could use this with place value too. Each cup coup represent a value. Starting with the 1’s, count the marbles. If there are more than 9 marbles, put the extras in the next bigger place value.

    Reply
  8. Charla Dec 14, 2022

    Awesome idea! I'm going to attempt with my Grands soon! I am thinking maybe I will cut the cups in half and mount to the board so there are no gaps between them. But they still catch marbles? How fun to problem solve!

    Reply
  9. Anne Dimond Jun 10, 2023

    I haven't made this yet but I'm thinking instead off hot glue maybe tape the popsicle sticks to push pins? Then you could move or angle them for different effects. I can hardly wait to do this with my grands!

    Reply

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