Creating mazes is an ideal method to preserve college students engaged. It’s easy-prep and college students love designing them! #winwin

Just a few years in the past I had a fantastic thought about having college students full a STEM Problem to create mazes from bins and paper. I believed they want to design these, however I used to be mistaken. They LOVED it!  

It by no means occurred to me they’d take pleasure in mazes a lot, however they actually do. They struggle so exhausting to make all of the paths work and have useless ends. Their mazes are additionally adorned so creatively.   Since that is such a wonderful challenge we’ve got tried this problem many occasions and in several methods.

On this put up, in your comfort, you could discover Amazon Affiliate hyperlinks to assets. Because of this Amazon will cross on small percentages to me along with your buy of things. This won’t create additional prices for you in any respect! It would assist me preserve this weblog working!

The three Maze initiatives we full yearly are:

• Paper Mazes
• Straw Mazes
• Plate Mazes
• BONUS: Escape the Maze No -Locks Escape Room

The supplies we use for the mazes trigger them to end up in another way and we’ve got tried some variations of those. I’ll add some hyperlinks on the finish of this put up to share different issues we’ve got tried!

Marble Mazes STEM Undertaking

The paper marble maze is the one we tried first a few years in the past. I used reward bins because the maze backside. Some form of field is an efficient idea- a present field, a comfortable drink flat, or the lid to the bins of copy paper. The scale of those bins is an efficient one for a maze and it’s additionally a method to sustain with the marble or in a position because it travels via the maze.

After attempting this maze a number of occasions we’ve got found that card inventory works nice and we’ve got additionally realized tips on how to fold the perimeters to make the maze partitions.

We often fold the paper in an ‘L’ form and this makes a wall and a floor that may be taped to the ground of your field. By becoming a member of many of those ‘L’ shapes collectively you’ll be able to create longer paths and paths that flip.

I did have some college students in the future that didn’t like working contained in the field they usually requested if they may reduce the corners of the field to open it out flat. They made all of the partitions of their maze and when it was completed they lifted the perimeters of the field and taped them again collectively.TIP: Pre-cut the strips of card inventory along with your paper cutter. You may have college students do that, however I’ve discovered that they reduce the paper too slim and it does get wasted.

Straw Maze Undertaking

This variation of the maze turned out to be actually enjoyable for my youthful college students. We name it a straw maze!

We use a chunk of froth board as the bottom of the maze and the partitions are solely product of straws.

We use clear tape to carry the straws in place. Above you’ll be able to see the flexible a part of the pink straw. I discovered straws at Greenback Tree in the future that had a really lengthy versatile half they usually labored nice to make curves in our mazes.

I additionally actually appreciated the black foam board because the maze base.

TIP: Purchase foam board at Greenback Tree for those who can. It’s clearly solely a greenback they usually have white and black. Foam board at Wal Mart or Goal prices much more!

Plate Mazes STEM Problem

This model of a maze is one we tried most just lately. I gave every crew a big heavy-duty paper plate and half sheets of many colours of copy paper. They needed to make the obstructions within the paths of the maze and likewise a transparent path {that a} marble may observe. They cherished these and actually labored exhausting to be inventive!

We added straws to the supplies for this model of the maze. College students talked about that the marble stored getting away they usually wanted a ‘bumper’. Once I heard this I believed it was a fantastic thought and I grabbed a bag of straw items I had saved. These made excellent bumpers for the marble to hit with a purpose to keep on its path.

Escape the Maze

Are you prepared for the last word maze useful resource?

The Situation: The crew has entered a human-size maze (it’s fake). The maze is definitely on paper they usually hint their path via as they full the duties.

Within the maze, groups discover their path is blocked by a “lock”. To open the lock a job have to be accomplished. When the duty is accomplished they obtain a math downside. The maths downside reply “unlocks” that portion of the maze they usually proceed.

The Duties:

• Letter maze
• Sample maze
• Secret Code
• Phrase search that has synonyms for the phrase AMAZE

College students can advance on their paper maze once they have an accurate reply for every job. Better of all: This Escape Room has the paper plate STEM Problem included!

Which of those 4 Maze initiatives will you attempt? Right here is an idea- attempt the No Locks Breakout first and observe up with designing a maze!

RELATED ARTICLES

Just a few stuff you may want for constructing mazes-