Big Picture Maze: The Orangutan's Way to the Banana Tree

A rainforest floor covers the whole page, crowded with narrow paths. An orangutan starts at the green circle in one corner, and a banana tree waits in the opposite corner under a leafy canopy. The way between them is long and twists back on itself, and many side paths branch off it. Some of those side paths are short, but others run deep into the jungle and only stop after several turns. A toucan, a parrot, a sloth, a frog, palm trees and bright jungle flowers sit on the islands between the paths.

This page is about planning, the skill a first grader is ready to stretch. The instruction asks the child to look at the whole maze first and only then draw the orangutan's way. Children who start drawing at once will meet a deep dead end, back up and try again, which is exactly the point: backtracking is how a maze teaches that a first choice can be checked and changed. Many children find it helps to work backwards from the banana tree for a short stretch, then join the two ends.

Print it as a PDF, use the screen version where the child drags along the path and can press Go back, or check the work against the answer key, which shows the one right way in colour. In the same family, the hedgehog orchard maze is the gentler kindergarten version, and the town maze asks for the shortest of several ways rather than the only one. These are picture mazes with a story; square-grid mazes, dot-to-dot and word sorting have their own pages.