A maze is a puzzle that is solved with a pencil and a bit of patience. Children love them, and a page of mazes is finished far too quickly.
So draw your own. It takes five minutes, and you can make the maze exactly as hard as your child needs today. Along the way your child practises the habit behind every good plan: looking ahead before moving.
The trick: draw the path first
A maze is easy to draw once you know the order.
- Mark the start and the finish, far apart.
- Draw the correct path lightly in pencil, as a line that wanders across the page.
- Add side branches that leave this line and stop: the dead ends.
- Now draw the walls in pen, on both sides of every path, leaving a gap wherever two paths meet.
- Rub out the pencil lines.
On squared paper it is even easier: draw the walls along the printed lines and keep the path one or two squares wide.
Three levels
| Level | The maze | What your child practises |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | One wide, winding corridor with no branches | Steering the pencil and following a route with the eyes |
| 2 | Three to five short dead ends that can be seen at a glance | Looking down a branch before entering it |
| 3 | Long dead ends, and two routes to the finish | Planning, going back, and comparing two routes |
At level 1 the only rule is not to touch the walls. That is enough for small hands. At level 3, ask afterwards which of the two routes is shorter and let your child count the squares to check.
Solving habits worth teaching
- Eyes first, pencil second. Let your child trace a route with a finger, or only with the eyes, before drawing.
- Stop at every junction. Look along each branch as far as you can see, then choose.
- A dead end is information. Go back to the last junction, not to the start, and put a small cross on the branch that didn't work.
- Try from the finish. Many mazes are easier when solved backwards. Let your child discover why: there are often fewer choices near the end.
None of these needs to be explained in advance. Wait until your child is stuck, then offer one of them as an idea to try.
Your child draws a maze for you
When solving has become easy, swap roles. Designing a maze is harder than solving one, because your child has to plan the correct path and then hide it.
Solve it slowly and think aloud: "This branch looks good, because it heads towards the flag. Oh, a dead end." Your child hears how a solver thinks, and soon notices what makes a maze hard: dead ends that start off in the right direction.
There is one more check that children enjoy. Is there really a way through? Many first mazes have none, and finding that out is good debugging.
| Rough age | What to try |
|---|---|
| 4–5 | A wide corridor with no branches; tracing with a finger first |
| 6–7 | A few short dead ends; stopping at junctions; solving from the finish |
| 8–9 | Long dead ends; two routes and counting which is shorter; drawing a maze on squared paper |
| 10 and up | Mazes with a rule, such as fetching a key before the exit; designing a maze with one tempting dead end |
Ages are only a rough guide, and every child is different.
In Dologi, "Maze" puzzles in the Space topic ask children to draw a path that takes a circle to a star without going through walls. The habits are the same ones: look ahead, and go back when a branch is closed.
In short
- Draw the correct path first, then the dead ends, then the walls.
- Three levels: a single wide corridor, short dead ends, then long dead ends and two routes.
- Eyes first, stopping at junctions, going back one junction and trying from the finish are habits for any maze.
- Designing a maze for someone else shows children what makes a problem hard.
Read more: Planning before doing: teaching children to think three steps ahead