What is a labyrinth?
A labyrinth is a space made up of streets and crossroads, expressly designed to confuse whoever enters. The labyrinth has been known since prehistoric times.
It has often been used as a symbol of the difficulties of travel, the possibility of getting lost along the way and the risk of not reaching the destination, but also as entertainment.
The difficulties they present and the mystery transmitted by the labyrinths make them very suitable for making games.
In this case, we present you with a multicursal maze, with a rectangular or square base, where there are several paths to reach the destination, and some dead ends or “traps” that may force you to go back.
Activity preparation time: you need between 1.5-2 hours to complete a simple maze. If you want to make it more complicated you can be 3-5h. It depends on the difficulty.
Difficulty: It depends on the design you make of the maze. It can be very simple or complicated.
What will you learn? Spatial intelligence. Develop the ability to process information in 3 dimensions and physically reproduce imagined objects.
Caution: with the cutter. We mainly use it to prepare the material.
Age: from 6 years. The preparation of the activity material will be carried out by an adult.
Material:
- A cardboard surface of 40 x 40 cm.
- We will have to cut with a cutter, many long cardboard strips, about 3 cm wide, which will be used to make the walls of the labyrinth.
- Pair of scissors
- Brushes – to put the white glue
- White glue.
- Marble
Steps to follow:
1. Draw a picture of the maze that you would like to build. You have to keep in mind that the base is square.
2. To make the drawing, you must bear in mind that the labyrinth must have an entrance and an exit. We have colored them in yellow.
3. In this labyrinth, the objective is to get a marble from the entrance to the exit, making it circulate through the labyrinth, modifying the inclination of the labyrinth. This presents an added difficulty to the complexity of the maze itself, since it adds a skill component.
4. Now that we have the drawing, we prepare the base of the maze . We start by cutting a very flat, square, 40 x 40 cardboard surface
5. Next we draw the entrance and exit of the maze, which must be on two adjacent sides (which are very close to each other) of the square.
6. The doors are halfway up the side and measure 4 cm. (We must make sure that the gray we use passes well). Once the doors have been drawn, we can start building the maze.
Look at the drawing:
If you want, you can draw on the cardboard the maze that you had made on paper, it will be easier for you to put the walls .
7. We cut the cardboard strips that make up the wall . The cardboard strips that make up the wall, we are cutting them to the size that suits us with scissors and we glue them with white glue, applied with a brush, depositing the glue in sufficient quantity.
To make the 4 sides you need:
– 4 strips 18 cm long and 3 or 3.5 cm wide, and
– 2 strips 40 cm long and 3 or 3.5 cm wide
8. We glue the strips . We can start by hooking the perimeter walls of the labyrinth, leaving the two doors uncovered.
White glue takes a few minutes to dry, but since cardboard weighs very little, if we are careful we can continue working even if it is not dry.
TIP : We must remember to also put glue on the sides of the strips where they make contact with other walls.
TIP : How do you apply the glue? For the glue to adhere well to the cardboard, instead of stretching it, it is better to put it in droplets with the brush.
9. We make the interior of the labyrinth. Once we have the perimeter, we can start the tour.
If you have drawn your maze on cardboard, it will be easier and faster to glue the interior walls.
If you design the maze directly, then you must hook the walls as you create it. This has an added level of difficulty.
IMPORTANT: The only thing we must take into account is to maintain the thickness of the streets to always allow the passage of the marble.
No matter how you do it, remember that the glue does not dry right away, and that we can change our mind and move a wall if necessary.
10. The maze can have 2 FLOORS!
The maze can have two floors in some areas. To raise the marble to a second floor, we will need a ramp.
How is a RAMP made?
To make a ramp, nothing easy than putting a slanted cardboard strip. The second floor must also have walls so that the gray does not fall where we do not want it.
TIP : There is a trick that must be taken into account so that the cane can go up the ramp with ease. We must remove one of the layers from a piece of cardboard strip, and with that thin layer we must connect the ramp with the ground, so that there is no step left and the bullet can rise smoothly.
11. More structures on the upper deck: We can continue adding structures on the upper deck, such as ramps or bridges.
12. Add structures. We have ordered adding structures to the labyrinth and putting up walls … little by little … it has been taking shape … look at the image
13. Other structures:
We can make curved walls (1), Arch bridges (2), or create control points through which the marble must pass before reaching the exit (3). We can also set traps or dead ends (for example, you fall down a ramp in a place that you cannot get out of!), Etc. There is no limit to the imagination. The more complex, the more fun !!
14. How is a bridge made?
a. Draw the bridge you want to put on a piece of cardboard and cut it out:
b. Then make a copy of the trimmed bridge and trim it: Now we have made the two walls of the bridge.
c. Cut a strip to make the floor of the bridge: we will shape it with our hands
d. Put white glue and stick it:
e. And now you can hook it to the maze!
f. Remember to put the thinnest piece of cardboard so that the marble can rise!
15. Add dots and holes . The course is more fun if it has holes to fall through and points to score!
16. You can paint the Labyrinth: To finish, if you want, you can color your Labyrinth! We have painted them using tempera paint.
Extension of the labyrinth:
If you have a friend or family member who also wants to do a maze, they can put their mazes together and make a mega maze.
The only thing you need to consider is where to put the input and output.
In our labyrinth there is an entrance and an exit, which are placed on two of the sides of the square. In this way, we can combine our maze (A) with three more (B, C and D) and make a super maze of 80 x 80 cm where we can combine the mazes between them to change the routes
See how this mega maze looks like once built! And it is played with 4 hands !!
In this maze we have put a small maze made by a 4 year old boy!
