Town Maze: Find the Shortest Way to the Green Car

A small town is seen from above: grey streets run between green blocks of lawn, and houses, trees, a garage, a bike, a scooter and a mailbox stand along the edges of the map. A tow truck waits at the green start circle on one side, and a green car is parked on the other. Unlike most mazes, this one has many ways through: the streets join up again and again, and a few are closed by barriers. Every piece of street between two crossings carries one round manhole cover, and the strip under the map shows one street piece with its cover equal to 1, next to an empty box.

The question is not whether you can reach the car, but which way is shortest. Children often believe that the way with the fewest turns must be the shortest, and this page is built so that a straighter way is longer. Counting settles it: each cover is one street piece, so the child counts the covers along a way, compares ways, draws the shortest one and writes its number in the box. That is real first grade measurement thinking, done with a picture instead of a ruler.

The page prints as a PDF, works as a screen version where the child drags a way for the truck and presses Check (a longer way gets the hint that there is a shorter one), and comes with an answer key showing the shortest way and its count. In the same family, the big jungle maze has only one way through, and the running-total maze adds up signs along the road instead. These are picture mazes with a story; square-grid mazes, dot-to-dot and word sorting have their own pages.