It’s All Ah-Mazing: The Marvelous Marble Maze Challenge

Middle School students put their engineering and design skills to the test in their latest hands-on learning project as they tinkered away in the MakerSpace Design Lab to create handheld marble mazes for an in-class competition.

In groups, students worked together to brainstorm the theme and structural design. Each maze had to follow a specific rubric, which included a start and finish line, one singular route all the way through, at least one bridge for the ball to go over, and at least one tunnel for the ball to pass through. On an exciting note, students had to use the new 3D printers to create a piece for the maze.

MakerSpace teacher Ann Kohler challenged the students to think outside of the box with the thematic design. The creative themes ranged from Under the Sea and Barbie to train station and fire blaze flames to red, white, and blue, and more.

For the competition, the groups presented their mazes to a series of judges including Middle School Director Brian Christman, Middle School science teachers Paulomi Aldo and Aidan Clark-Long, history teacher Bud Kohler, head media specialist Stacey Schwartz, and physical education teacher Brendan Moran. The mazes were judged on creativity, originality of design and materials, and appearance.

“It was truly a team effort as some students focused on the design elements while others worked on the structural portion of the maze,” said Mrs. Kohler.