Last week we had a theme of mazes. We were gifted this really fun book Mummy Mazes, by Elizabeth Carpenter, with poster sized mazes. The kids were enthralled with the pictures and while it was a bit advanced for my preschoolers, we are keeping it for future maze fun! Till then, it’s time for us to make our own and practice problem solving and giving directions to each other! Here are easy directions on how to create a maze in mere minutes. After we made the maze we got our toy cars out and had a blast.
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What you will need to make a maze:
- Yarn
- Sticky Tack
- Tagboard or paper
- Marker
How to create the maze:
Create the route with the yarn and the sticky tack. This is the easiest step, but try making a maze without first creating a “yarn guide”! It is so hard to do! Coming up with the “right” solution first and then filling in the “wrong” ways makes maze making a simple process.
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Once you have your path figured out, add false paths. We used a ruler to get even widths and to make our paths straight. The perk of using a ruler is that it was the perfect width for our cars. Our maze fits matchbox cars splendidly!
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Get your toy cars out and have a blast! We brought this maze to our Sunday school class of 4 year olds and it entertained them.
To enrich this activity, have the kids take turns giving each other or you directions. Solving mazes are great for developing problem solving skills as well as learning spatial reasoning and discerning between lefts and rights with our kiddos!
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Thanks Workman books for thinking of us! We love new books!
About Rachel
LOVE this idea! Thank you!! My maze loving boy will get a kick out of this!! I love your idea of marking the ‘path’ first! That makes things SO much easier!!!
Wow! That is so fun! I’m going to tweet this!
What a great activity for problem-solving skills – and fun! I featured this on the Living Montessori Now Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/LivingMontessoriNow
This will be great to make for JDaniel.
what a neat idea, I need to be trying more things on your blog
Thank you for sharing your maze ideas!
Ring true,
Nancy
Great idea! This would be good for practicing using a straight edge.
What a wonderful idea! And so simple! I think that maze will keep them guessing!
I can vouch for this being a truly captivating activity for young children. The simplest ideas always seem to be the best.
My oldest used to love it when we drew mazes for him. We never made them like this though! You are brilliant!! Your maze rocks!
Hi Rachel,
I love your post, sincerely. I am actually an elementary art teacher. I was browsing the internet to collect ideas that I could integrate in their activities. Hope you wouldn’t mind me following your steps. I’d love to see more of your post.
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