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Learning Story: “Marble Run by Fiona + Alma”
A shared act of building, remembering, and representing motion
Observation (The Story)
It started with a glance—Fiona paused near the block area, where two dollhouses stood close together. She lingered a moment noticed a marble and then she had an idea.
Without saying anything, she turned to the shelves. She began gathering materials—blocks, ramps, a marble—and carried them to the floor. She cleared space, set down the first pieces, and began to build.
The first few trials didn’t work. The marble bumped awkwardly, stopped short. Fiona adjusted the incline, added support, tried again. Her attention didn’t waver.
Alma, nearby, noticed Fiona walking past with armfuls of blocks. She wandered over and asked,
“What are you doing?”
Fiona looked up and shared the idea.
Then she handed Alma a block.
That gesture—offering part of the materials without hesitation—was all it took. The project was now shared.
From the beginning, Fiona and Alma moved together through the work. They set blocks in place, tested, shifted, and rebuilt. They were quiet at times, focused. At other moments, they talked through what they saw: why the marble slowed down here, what to do when it rolled off the edge.
They worked like this for the entire morning.
They built up the base of the run, adjusted for height and slope, added side walls when the marble began falling off on the turns. They experimented with support structures—staggered blocks, tight stacks, unexpected combinations. The marble run grew longer, steadier, more complex.
And then, at some point, it worked. The marble traveled from top to bottom without hesitation. They tested it again, just to be sure. It worked again.
They both sat back and watched it roll.
But the work didn’t end there.
A shared act of building, remembering, and representing motion
Fiona stood and reached for a large sheet of paper. She began to draw what they had built. Alma joined her. Together they traced the shapes of the blocks, the slopes of the ramp, the basic geometry of what they had constructed.
About halfway through, Fiona paused.
“I’m trying to draw how it moved,” she said.
She added a few curved lines—trails that arced across the page. But she frowned slightly. The lines didn’t capture it.
Then she remembered.
Weeks before, in a different project, Fiona had learned to fold paper into soft hills. She had used the technique to represent waves—now she used it again to show motion.
She had a strip of paper and added the marble in multiple stages as it rolled down the path. She folded it into gentle peaks, laid it across the drawing, and rolled it forward. The paper mimicked the marble’s path enough to show the rhythm, the rise and fall, the energy of the run.
She didn’t explain what she was doing. She just did it. Alma nodded, and together they worked the folds into the layout.
They added a title:
“Marble Run by Fiona + Alma.”
And then they made tickets.
Each one read “2:00 PM.” They passed them out carefully—one for each friend. They set up chairs, arranged the run and the drawing side by side, and prepared their presentation.
When the time came, Fiona stood up.
“Please find your seat,” she said.“We’re going to show you our marble run. Then you can ask questions.”
They demonstrated the track, sent the marble rolling. A pause followed. Then Emily raised her hand.
The conversation had begun.
But the story didn’t end with the presentation.
In this space, children’s projects aren’t taken down at the end of the day. They’re allowed to remain—lived with, revisited, and remembered. Fiona and Alma’s marble run stayed out on the floor for several days. Other children wandered by, watched the marble roll, tried it for themselves.
It wasn’t just a structure. It became a kind of kinetic sculpture—part installation, part invitation.
Some children asked how they made the walls. Others offered marbles of different weights. Fiona and Alma explained, made small repairs, and sometimes just sat and watched.
The project shifted from a private collaboration to a public part of the classroom landscape.
And eventually—when the time felt right—it was taken down. But the folded paper drawing remained. A trace. A record. A language of movement, shared.
Educator’s Reflection
Fiona and Alma’s marble run was more than a successful build. It was a study in persistence, collaboration, and the desire to understand—not just how something works, but how to share what was felt and seen.
They didn’t finish when the marble rolled. They extended the experience, moving into drawing and then further still—into movement on paper. Fiona’s folded strip wasn’t decoration; it was communication, grounded in memory and grounded in her own history with materials.
By leaving the project out in the days that followed, the marble run transformed again—from a personal creation to a classroom encounter. It lived longer than the hour it took to build. And perhaps longer still, in the drawing that remains.
Child Voice
“What are you doing?”“I’m trying to draw how it moved.”
“Please find your seat.”
“Then you can ask questions.”
What Learning Might Be Happening?
- Engineering and Iteration: The children tested incline, friction, weight, and speed through real-time problem-solving.
- Peer Collaboration: From the very beginning, the project was shared. Both children contributed ideas, observations, and adjustments.
- Memory Through Drawing: The drawing came after the building—an act of reflection and preservation.
- Knowledge Transfer: Fiona reused a folding technique from a previous project to solve a new representational challenge.
- Community Engagement: The presentation, tickets, and lingering presence of the marble run invited others into their learning.
Connections to Reggio Emilia Principles
- The Hundred Languages: Building, drawing, folding, storytelling, and performance were all languages used to make meaning.
- Children as Protagonists: The project was entirely child-led, shaped by curiosity, not direction.
- Learning in Relationship: The partnership was seamless and mutual—co-construction at its core.
- Time as a Material: The project unfolded across multiple days, without interruption or artificial deadlines.
- Memory and Trace: The folded paper drawing held the echo of the original experience and the desire to share it.
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