For classrooms, libraries and clinics.
What these books were written against, how they behave in a room with twenty children in it, and what you can photocopy.
Standards
Every activity carries a learning-goal tag in our notes, not on the child's page.
We wrote the activities against four frameworks, and we keep the tags
off the printed page on purpose: a four-year-old does not need
ELOF P-MATH 7 in the corner of their maze.
- Head Start ELOF: Mathematics Development and Scientific Reasoning domains
- NGSS Kindergarten: K-PS2, K-PS3, K-LS1, K-ESS2, K-ESS3 and K-2-ETS1
- Common Core Math K: K.CC, K.OA, K.MD, K.G
- CSTA K–2: algorithms and programming, taught unplugged
The order of the math skills follows the Clements and Sarama learning trajectories rather than our own sense of what feels more challenging.
In a room of twenty
- Non-linear: each level or unit is self-contained, so a child can start anywhere in their band
- Icon-first instructions, so you are not reading the same sentence twenty times
- The child uses the answers at the back, which takes the marking off you
- No timers and no scores, so a slow finisher is not visibly behind
- Line art photocopies cleanly, so a page can be reused across a class
The four books
Mazes For Little Explorers
Ages 3–5 · Preschool – KindergartenOne maze per page, from a single wide channel a three-year-old can finish to an 11×11 grid with real dead ends.
Patterns Sorting & Sequencing
Ages 4–6 · PreK – Grade 1Matching, sorting, seriation, and patterns from AB to growing. This is the thinking a child needs before arithmetic makes sense.
Earth, Sky & Space
Ages 4–6 · PreK – Grade 1Day and night, weather, land and water, living things, the moon and stars, and the eight planets, drawn accurately.
Coding & Engineering
Ages 4–6 · PreK – Grade 1Sequences, loops, conditionals and debugging, written in arrows on paper. No app, no tablet, no login.
Copying
Copying, and seeing it first
The free printable sheets may be photocopied for a class, a library, a clinic or a waiting room, as many times as you need. Please link here rather than re-hosting the files.
28 of them are on this site, cut out of the finished interiors at the size they print, so you can judge whether these suit your room before anyone buys a set.
Occupational therapy
We built the maze book around a grasp progression. Corridor widths run from 0.55 in at the easiest level to 0.28 in at the most difficult, in five measured steps, so it works as a graded motor task rather than one difficulty.
We reasoned those widths from grasp milestones rather than validating them clinically, and we label them that way in our own documentation.