I remember when I was a little girl, I found marbles fascinating. So I was delighted when I found my students enamored with them as well. I designed the fine motor activity below in an effort to strengthen their fine motor skills. My students enjoyed trying to balance the marbles, but seemed even more captivated by the marbles themselves.
They loved holding the marbles between their fingers and looking through them. Examining and naming the colors, choosing their favorites, describing them. I knew that I wanted to expand upon this interest, and after one of my students requested if we could glue the marbles, I began brainstorming what kinds of art projects we could engage in that involved marbles and glue. I didn't want to do the typical "roll marbles in paint" provocation (while this is fun) because their interest seemed more centered in the beauty of the marbles themselves. After some consideration, I decided we would experiment with suncatchers.
I provided students with a few materials. Container lids, clear glue, marbles, glass gems, and suction cups. The students poured the clear glue into the container lids (the more glue the better), selected their glass decorations, and placed them into the pool of glue. Then we added the suction cups. The results were beautiful.
This was after two days of drying. If I were to do this provocation again, I would use deeper container lids and more glue because of the size of the marbles. I ended up supplementing with hot glue over top to ensure we didn't have any marble casualties when hanging. A more ambitious teacher could experiment with resin as an alternative to the clear glue, but I feel happy with how these turned out, and my littles love their creations.
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