May 19, 2010

Rainy Day Maze Activities

It rained all day... again. While my girls ran around the house screaming like banshees, I searched for a favorite quiet-time activity: mazes.

Mazescapes by Roxie Munro


I picked up this book from the library for E, thinking she would love it. It's a Where's Waldo type book with intricate bird's-eye drawings of the roads below. The book asks you to drive one of the punch-out cars through each of the pages to eventually arrive at the zoo. There are also other suggested games kids can play finding certain things in each picture or taking an alternate route on the "way home."


E wanted nothing to do with it. She's either too young still or else just too girly, but the book didn't interest her in the least. Still, I'm throwing it out there because I thought it was pretty cool, and judging by how beat-up the book is, there are lots of other kids out there who agreed with me.


Amazing Mazes (Kumon's Practice Books) 

Amazing Mazes (Kumon's Practice Books)
E does love this Kumon workbook which features various mazes of increasing difficulty and complexity. We bought it for her last summer, and I was impressed by how well she did with the mazes. She's always been very slow with puzzles, but she rocked the mazes. My hubby made a huge deal over how well she did, and it was cute to see her confidence soar.






Free Maze Printables

If it's raining and you don't feel like rowing to the bookstore, there are tons of free online mazes.

Step-through Maze
Family Fun offers this template to cut out and turn one sheet of paper into a giant loop you can fit your whole family in.

Family Fun Mazes
The site offers 23 free mazes to download and print out. Many of these are seasonal and all of them revolve around some sort of theme.

Letter Mazes
Printactivities.com offers free printable mazes for nearly every letter of the alphabet.


Marble Maze Craft


Isn't this maze a-mazing? (Oh, c'mon, you knew I'd have to use the pun eventually.) Heather @ The Creative Homemaker posts a step-by-step tutorial on how to make your own marble maze. If I didn't need a boat to get to the hardware store today, I would have started on our own. The best part is that this could double as a geoboard, especially if you don't paint it in a grid pattern.

3 comments:

  1. I like that maze book, too! It looks really fun--and that marble maze looks like even more fun!

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  2. I wonder if the pegs on my geoboard are fan enough apart for that to work. Otherwise I might be making this one also......
    And maybe my kids are finally old enough to try the maze books. They're actually showing interest in mazes.

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  3. Mazescapes looks really fun. I too wonder if B is old enough... but might as well give it a shot! He'd love the board for sure - maybe we'll set him to that project with dad this weekend!

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