Qball Marble Maze

In our adventure with "makerspace" areas this year, we stumbled on a product that looked super fun. Qball Marble Maze

We purchased ours from Demco. In looking at Demco's site, there are now several different Q-Ba kits for mazes! I loved the idea of a vertical maze rather than a flat horizontal maze. Students loved building with these blocks. They did have some trouble connecting them together as each block does not fit directly on top of each other. Some connect on the sides.

We did establish a few ground rules before students started on their mazes.
1. Your maze must stand on it's own.
2. Your maze must be more than 3 blocks high and not drop straight down.
3. You can work together or on your own. Your choice.

Check out these awesome towers students built!

Were all of the mazes a success? No. But the conversations and problem-solving that was taking place was so awesome. Hearing students say things like "I need more support at my base", discussing gravity and trajectory, or using marker boards and markers to sketch their towers was where the true learning takes place.