Amaz-ing

 Marble Maze- Cognitive skills

Steps to making the Marble Maze

First we created a base for our maze.  We created some concentric circles inspired by Kandinsky, using felts, pastels or pens.

 Next we cut our circles into smaller squares and rectangles and glued them onto the base of our cardboard.  We created a new pattern with them.

Then we added straws and cardboard and made a maze that a marble could run through.  We added extra decorations to enhance the look of our game. 

Then we tested them.

Amaz-ing!

Marble Maze

We have been learning about mazes and how they can help us boost our brain by :

• Problem solving

• Remembering

• Building focus

• increase our concentration

• and make our minds grow greater!

They created their own marble mazes using simple materials like straws and cardboard.  The background was created by using concentric circle art that they had made, inspired by artist Kandinsky.

As they designed and constructed the maze, they had to consider the placement of walls, the layout of the paths, and the positioning of obstacles to create a solvable puzzle. This process encouraged them to think logically and plan ahead. 

Building the mazes helped them to enhance their critical thinking and problem-solving abilities while having a lot of fun!

Coding - Making Mazes

 I am back at school teaching after living in Fiji for the last 6 months!!  This term I am teaching Year 3.

Maze Coding

We are looking a mazes.  We discussed what a maze was and how we had to really use our brains to problem solve and think about how we were going to get to the finish.  After the class completed their own paper maze they created their own by either using squared paper or a lego base.  Once they had created their maze they then wrote a code to show how their maze could be completed.

They had to have a start and a finish and a clear path

They wrote the code on  a white board This is an example of different ability levels, some chose to use arrows and numerals.

This was the progression from paper maze to duplo, then written code.

This student was working at the level of still drawing lots of arrows instead of giving numerals.

Some students added lots of extras to their maze, such as health or booby traps.  Others had tasks to complete along the way.