My First Maze: Help the Puppy Reach the Ball

This is the maze to start with. A puppy sits at the green start circle in a spring park, and its ball waits at the other end of the page. One very wide road joins them, wide enough for a chunky crayon, with only a couple of short side turns that stop quickly. Around the road the park is full of friendly pictures: a cat, a butterfly, a bird, a cherry tree in blossom and bright tulips, so the page feels like a picture to enjoy before it feels like a puzzle.

For a three- or four-year-old the real work is the hand, not the plan. Keeping a line inside two edges, turning with the road and not cutting across the grass builds the pencil control that tracing and early writing need later. The two short wrong turns add the first taste of choosing: a child who follows one sees it end straight away and comes back without losing heart. Say the story aloud together, the puppy wants its ball, and let the child show the way with a finger first, then with a crayon.

The page prints as a PDF, works as a screen version where the child drags along the road and presses Check, and has an answer key with the way drawn in colour. When this page feels easy, the next steps in the same family are the hedgehog orchard maze for kindergarten, the river maze with its long smooth curves, and the babies-and-mothers maze with three roads. These are picture mazes with a story; square-grid mazes, dot-to-dot and word sorting have their own pages.