Toddler Craft Archives

Cardboard Creations - DIY Easy Rebuildable Ball Run Track for Pom Poms that Toddlers can make again and again One of our favorite places to visit is the Boston Museum of Science. At the Museum of Science they have an amazing room just for toddlers and in this room they have a huge magnetic wall that has different sized and shaped PVC pipe secured to huge magnets. There is also a mechanism that sucks up little ping pong balls and drops them down a shoot at the top of the magnetic wall. The children can rearrange the magnetic PVC pipes to create different paths for the balls to drop down. This is my son’s favorite part of the museum and he could spend hours playing with the ball run.

Cardboard Creations - DIY Easy Rebuildable Ball Run Track for Pom Poms that Toddlers can make again and again I started thinking more and more about the different elements of the ball run and decided it wouldn’t be very difficult to recreate a ball run that had moveable pieces for our home. It was super fast, easy and inexpensive to build and my son has played with it for hours! Nothing like bringing a little taste of the Museum of Science home with us. 🙂

Supplies Needed:

Large Piece of Cardboard
Lots of Toilet Paper Rolls
Paper Towel Rolls
Felt Fabric Sheet
Velcro
Pom Poms
Paint (optional)

Set Up:

Cut your cardboard to the size you want your ball run to be. I choose a piece that was about my son’s height and I left a flap of cardboard along the bottom so it would have a little bit better balance.
Cover your cardboard with your felt fabric sheet.
Paint your toilet paper and paper towel rolls.
Add a small square of the hook side of velcro to each cardboard tube. We found that they worked best when we did once piece at each end, even on the small rolls because they stuck to the felt better.
Finish by sticking your velcroed pieces to the felt and start sending the pom poms down the shoot.

Additional Ideas:

Cardboard Creations - DIY Easy Rebuildable Ball Run Track for Pom Poms that Toddlers can make again and again

If you want curved piece cut one of your rolls on a diagonal in the middle and rotate it around so the long parts of the diagonal are next to each other and short parts are next to each other. I secured it with a two pieces of masking tape, glue would also work great.
We played with pom poms, bouncy balls and little toys cars are also fun.
If you have older children it would be fun to set up tasks for your children to figure out, such as start the balls in the top right corner and find a way to get them clear over to the bottom left corner, or some other place.

Thanks for reading!

Have you tried to make a ball run? I would love to see the ball run you’ve created or hear about any of your experiences or thoughts to make it better in the comments section.

This review is 100% my own opinion and sponsored only by myself.

I first experienced the Crayola Slick Stixs at a toddler playgroup my son and I attended. They were learning about the letter Z and coloring some Zebras. I was there, playing with and also enjoying some new kinds of art supplies, while I attempted to keep my son from painting his neighbor.

Then I picked up a slick stix and ran it across the paper. Then again. It was like magic. Ha. It was so smooth and the color was vibrant I felt like I was coloring with lip stick. I loved it! I ended up coloring a good portion of my sons neglected zebra just because these crayon/markers were so interesting to use…

And then I went home, hoped on Amazon and bought us a set. I feel like they are fairly expensive (they end up being about a $1/piece, so $5 for the set of 5 and $12/for the 12 pack) but in my opinion they are worth it. Suddenly coloring time with my son was also coloring time for mom and it’s funny but coloring with these crayons felt relaxing in a similar way to painting, they stick to the paper and slide, you’re left with a super bright colorful spaces. Pretty much they are just fun.

I love coloring with them and when our 5 pack was used up I splurged and got the 12 pack, however there are a few set backs. First, they are pretty expensive for a crayon in my book, second if you don’t have the lid on them they will dry out and lose their lipstick like feeling, though they will still color. Third, they smear, at least right after they’ve been put to paper, which meant after coloring time my son needed his hands washed from touching the paper and I needed to make sure he didn’t lean on the art work while it was still freshly done, after an hour or two of sitting the Slick Stix art work seemed to dry and smearing was less of a problem.

Pros: