The beauty of home education is that you can focus on the individual’s interests in a way that captures their learning style best. For us STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) and fun are definitely the best ways to capture both the boys’ interest. They love visual resources that they can adapt to release their creativity whilst furthering their knowledge. GraviTrax, from Ravensburger is just perfect for this – a new interactive track system which allows them to engineer and construct their own system whilst teaching them about gravity, magnetism, kinetic energy, momentum, velocity, and problem solving.
About GraviTrax Starter Set
GraviTrax can be designed freestyle to discover what happens as you make alterations to the track; with the starter set featuring over a 100 pieces and 18 different components and action parts for children to experiment with, including bottom plates, height blocks, curves, intersections, target ladders and rails. Everything that is required to get started with building a marble run. Discover the laws of physics as the gravity sphere or spheres are released down the track, giving children the tools to experiment and predict what will happen (which ball will get there first? Will the gravity spheres fly off the track? Or stop before the end?). Leading on to problem solving of how they can change things – should they change the height? Will they introduce twists and turns to change direction? How will this affect the kinetic energy and momentum? The variety of tiles, levels, tracks and elements make this possible changing the height and angles to control the speed of the marble.
GraviTrax Starter Set Contents
- 1x Set of Instructions
- 1x Set of Blueprint
- 1x Exercise booklet
- 4x Card Bases
- 2x Transparent levels
- 6x Gravity Spheres
- 3x Long Rails
- 6x Medium Rails
- 9x Short Rails
- 1x Magnetic Cannon
- 21x Curved Bases
- 3x ‘X’ intersection Bases
- 1x Vortex Base
- 2x ‘Y’ Points Bases
- 1x End target
- 1 x 3 in 1 Base
- 4x Bases for inserts
- 1x 3 Way Starter Base Insert
- 2 x Catcher Base Inserts
- 2 x Switches
- 1x Base Insert
- 1x Free Fall Base Insert
- 1x Target Base Insert
- 40 x Large Vertical Tiles
- 12 x Small Vertical Tiles
The GraviTrax App
There is also a FREE GraviTrax app, which has a building editor which allows action-packed tracks to be designed with different camera perspectives. The track can then be tested using the blueprints to build the actual system with the GraviTrax set. Utilising a VR headset you can even experience the track in action from the ball’s point of view with the Virtual Reality Feature.
GraviTrax Expanding on STEM Vocabulary
As well as playing and discovering what cause and effect could be made with the track GraviTrax was really useful for expanding the boys’ STEM vocabulary. I did this by thinking about all the words associated with GraviTrax that were STEM. Next I popped them into a wordsearch and got the boys to think about whether they knew what they all meant as they found them. As we discussed them I got them to think about how they could use this to help them with their tracks.
Conclusions of the GraviTrax Starter Set
The boys loved this set and it was definitely great for their educational learning in a fun way. It is easy to set up, understand and put away – as well as very creative and easily adaptable. The boys needed no help and could straight away get on with playing and learning. I think this will be a firm family favourite. It is great that they can use it to play alone or together too – especially with the use of multiple marbles.
Suitable for 1 + players ages 8 to adult.
Available at Amazon https://amzn.to/2Mz5Ju0
Price: £49.99
Also in the GraviTrax Range is a Trax Extension Pack, Building Extension Pack, Action Catapult Add-on, Action Hammer Add-on, Action Loop Add-on and an Action Magnetic Cannon Add-on (each sold separately).
We were sent a GraviTrax Starter Set for purposes of this review. All opinions are honest and my own.