Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00444
We received the Gravitrax Starter Kit for free from Ravensburger to play with and review. Opinions are our own.
This has been our first week of home school for Andy and Eva. While the kids are getting used to the new schedule and how things are working here they do need some supplemental education and challenges to get through each day. Whether is is assembling a go kart or going for a walk these little diversions from structured assignments have been very helpful. Today I took out Gravitrax for us to use.
I first saw Gravitrax at Toy Fair. There was a huge display of it at the entrance of the exhibit hall and it was fascinating. Gravitrax is a marble run system that is easy to assemble, has no motors but can keep the steel marbles going and going, if you create a trax with that intention. What impressed me most was that Gravitrax is a clean modular system. All the parts are measured out to a precise size and so they fit together easily for great marble movement. The starter kit gives you a bunch of pieces and instructions to make several different marble runs. However, you can make so many more of your own creations and with expansion there are all sorts of fun things to do.
Together we used this toy to work on following directions, problem solving, gravity, magnetism and kinetics. After we had built a few of the examples from the instruction booklet Andy wanted his turn at making his own track. Another nice feature is the mat at the bottom of the track. This has holes so that the elements can sit inside securely and they wont go sliding all over the place. This also helps when measuring out the distance between support pieces and the trax pieces. I like that the tracks lay down into the pieces and do not snap in place, it makes for quick changes when building. The toy lends itself well to trial and error and experimentation. Excellent for learning about cause and effect, too. You can see how excited Andrew was when using it in this video.
You can find out more about Gravitrax on their website and that site also has a bunch of useful videos about each of the elements as well as tips and tricks for builders.
I’ve found Gravitrax in Target and other stores but you can also order it online through our affiliate link to the Gravitrax sets on Amazon.com.