Thursday, January 28, 2016

Lego Maze Activity

This activity is such a great and simple way to entertain the children. All you need is Lego and marble. I let the girls created their own maze. We used 64 x 64 bumps Lego base plate. It was a bit harder for Iyra to control the base plate because it's too big. So I'd suggest to use the smaller base plate which is 32 x 32 bumps. We added up Lego people to cheer the marble up "Go Mr Marble go!". To play, we need to hold the base plate and gently tilt it back and forth so that the marble rolls.

We also browsed through some interesting stories on real life mazes. So here are some ah-MAZE-ing facts on real mazes (thanks to mentalfloss). 
  • First, people created labyrinths. Then after that came mazes. They created labyrinth not to confuse, but to send visitors on a spiritual journey.
  • Mazes and labyrinths have slightly different definitions. Mazes have multiple entrances and exits, and dead ends. A labyrinth has only a single path which leads to the center then back out the same way, with only one entry/ exit point. 
  • The first labyrinth was in Egypt built in the 5th century. It made up of thousands of rooms, many of which were underground and held the tombs of Egyptians kings.
  • The earliest maze was built in Europe to entertain royalty around 16th century.
  • The world's largest hedge maze contains almost 2.5 miles of paths. It is The Dole Plantation's giant Pineapple Garden Maze which is made up of 14, 000 tropical plants, and was declared the longest in the world in 2008. Photos here.
  • The new largest maze was declared in 2014. It is Cool Patch Pumpkin in Dixon, California spread to 60 acres of maze. It was so big few visitors getting lost in it!

New words learnt while playing the Lego maze:
  1. Exit
  2. Entrance
  3. Arch
  4. Perimeter
  5. Pathways

 I let my kids created the maze.

So much fun.

 So easy to make, so fun to play!

Iris said this is too easy. She planned of adding up some arched exit.

There is a big real corn maze somewhere in California. They searched for California on the map. 

They found Gila instead.

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