Why mazes help
A maze asks a child to plan ahead, look before they move and keep a pencil inside a path. That is the same eye and hand control they need for writing letters between the lines, which is why mazes sit so well next to tracing practice in preschool and Foundation.
Four levels
- Easy. Wide paths and few turns, for children just holding a pencil.
- Medium. More choices and a few dead ends.
- Hard. Long paths that wind across the page.
- Expert. Narrow paths and many dead ends, for older children who like a challenge.
Mazes for every season
Pick Halloween, winter, spring or another season and the pictures and page border change to match. Each PDF can hold up to 20 mazes, so one download covers a week of early finishers.
In the Australian Curriculum
- Before schoolEarly Years Learning Framework Outcome 3, wellbeing, includes children’s growing physical skills, such as hand control.
- FoundationForming letters using learnt formations (AC9EFLY08) depends on the same pencil control a maze practises.
Mazes aren’t part of the curriculum, and they don’t need to be. They are a calm, self-checking task for early finishers and wet-weather lunchtimes, and the easy level is a good pencil-control warm-up before handwriting in Foundation.
The seasonal mazes follow the northern hemisphere. Pick by theme rather than by month: here autumn runs from March to May and winter from June to August, so the winter pictures suit Term 2 and Term 3.
Summarised in our own words from the Australian Curriculum: English, Version 9.0 (ACARA) and the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia, V2.0.
