Students just love making mazes! Of all kinds! Mazes present plenty of opportunities for problem-solving and in the end, you get to play with them! Take a look at our mazes!
We have completed several different versions of mazes and they all have been spectacular. Let’s look at each type!
Marble Mazes
Our first maze challenge included using boxes, cardboard, paper, and tape.
Since then we have also tried the cardboard box that soft drinks come in. They are technically called “flats”.
In our first experience, kids had to draw a blueprint for the maze first! For some of them, this was tedious!
They wanted the drawing to be perfect! I did not expect this, but on the other hand, it is not surprising! Isn’t this exactly what an engineer would do! The next step was to create the mazes. I gave the kids gift boxes (the first time we tried this challenge) to use as their base- simply because I had tons of these at home! They bent cardboard and paper and used tape to make the paths of their mazes.
This ended up being quite an exercise in trial and error as they would make the paths too narrow or the walls too short. Many of them wanted to make the boxes more decorative so I let them use construction paper to line the boxes.
Then the most amazing thing happened!
I had one group ask if their maze could have a theme and that idea just took off. Soon we had all kinds of decorated and themed mazes. We had a volcano and trees, theme parks, and scary models! I had not planned on this feature, but it gave the kids an opportunity to be even more creative. The best part was that some kids kept working on the actual maze while others in the group began to work on the decorative parts. It was a true team effort!
Straw Mazes
The next maze challenge was to use only two supplies!
Straws and tape! This time I gave them a flat piece of heavyweight poster board and the kids actually drew their mazes on the board rather than graph paper.
Since this first experience, we have used foam board as our base. The black foam board is spectacular with those neon-colored straws!
You can see their pathways in the photo. The biggest problem we had with these was, again, that the kids would make the paths too narrow. We also found that sometimes the marble would jump over the walls of the maze. In both events, the part we liked best was…..trading mazes with other groups and trying them! Have you ever tried a maze with your class?
Paper Plate Mazes
This version of a maze is one we tried more recently.
I gave each team a large heavy-duty paper plate and half sheets of many colors of copy paper.
They had to make the obstructions in the paths of the maze and also a clear path that a marble could follow. They loved these and really worked hard to be creative!
We eventually added straws to the materials for this version of the maze. Students told me that the marble kept getting away and they needed a ‘bumper’. When I heard this I thought it was a great idea and I grabbed a bag of straw pieces I had saved. These made perfect bumpers for the marble to hit in order to stay on its path.
Are you ready to try a maze? Click on any of the images to see these in my store!
You might also enjoy these posts about amazing challenges!
I LOVE doing mazes with my kids! It is such a great activity. It looks like they worked really hard on theirs!