MazesAges 4 to 7
Easy mazes
Two small mazes per page with wide corridors and thick walls, for children who are learning to follow a path with a pencil or crayon. Each print is a new maze with an answer key.
- Fresh problems every time
- Answer key on its own page
- Print or PDF, Letter or A4
- Free, no sign-up
On this page
Wide paths matter for little hands. This page opens on the Easy setting with two mazes per page, so each corridor is wide enough for a chunky crayon.
What prints
The page title is "Easy Maze". The direction under it is to begin at the top and draw through the paths to the finish, with no crossing of walls. The two mazes are stacked, each turned sideways to fill half the page. At two per page, an Easy maze is 10 cells across and 6 down, which is 60 cells, compared with 8 × 10 when it is one to a page. The wall lines are drawn at their boldest weight, and a "Start" label marks the entry at top left with a "Finish" label under the exit at bottom right.
The key page redraws both mazes with the solution as a thick colored line.
The settings
- Difficulty: Easy here, with Medium, Hard and Expert one click away. Easy is 8 × 10 cells when printed one per page.
- Mazes per page: two to start; a single maze is the other choice.
Choose 1 per page if your child wants a bigger maze, since each cell grows and the paths get wider still.
Why only one route
Every maze here comes from a depth-first walk that carves out passages without ever making a loop. That means there is a single path from the entry to the exit and no shortcut to be found. For a child it also means that if two routes seem to work, one of them has a wall in it. A parent can use that as a prompt: look for the wall.
Helping a young solver
Let the child trace the path first with a finger. Then use a crayon or a thick marker so a wrong turn does not leave deep marks. Talk about dead ends as places where the path stops, and encourage going back to the last turn instead of starting over. Printing on card stock lets the page be reused with dry-erase markers in a plastic sleeve.
Worked example: preschool morning tubs
Mr. Okafor prepares a tub for his pre-K room. He prints five copies of the default sheet and slips each into a clear sleeve. At the table, a four-year-old picks a green dry-erase marker and starts at the Start label, stopping at a wall to say "bump". He tries a different turn, reaches the end of the first maze, and wipes it clean for the next child. The key sheets stay on the teacher's shelf for checking the ones that went astray.
Moving up
When these feel quick, the printable mazes page opens on Medium with one maze per page. A child who likes a puzzle with fewer words might also try sudoku for kids.
Sources
- NRICH, University of Cambridge: Logic problems and puzzles nrich.maths.org