Each of my kids (my best beta testers!) had different favorite activities from The Trip Clip. Those favorites changed over time, but for a very long time one of my kids could not get enough mazes. I used the Activity Book feature to print 20-30 mazes for him for each trip, raising the difficulty level as he got older and better at mazes.
Computer Generated
Although I did 99% of the work creating and building The Trip Clip, I have had a little help along the way, and one example of that is the mazes activity. My initial plan was to collect a set of static mazes (similar to what I do with sudoku and crossword puzzles) but our son went through them so fast, I wanted to figure out how to make more. My husband is a software developer, and he thought it would be fun to try writing a maze generator so that we would have an unlimited supply for our son. He wrote it in a way that we can set a difficulty level and the software will generator a new maze every single time. Really little kids can try the Beginner mazes, and older kids will enjoy the Extreme ones. There are 6 different levels to choose from:
This was a game changer for my older son who loved churning through maze after maze. We started him with the easier mazes, and eventually he worked his way up to the extreme ones. He liked to have a big stack clipped into his clipboard on each of our trips. You can buy the mazes activity to print as many mazes as you want at any difficulty level.
Learning From Mazes
Kids will think mazes are just fun, but there’s some good learning built into doing mazes. For really little kids, they will be practicing hand-eye coordination that’s important for handwriting. Any time they are holding a writing instrument and practicing drawing is great for their motor skills. As they work to solve the maze, and try harder and harder ones, they will be practicing problem solving, patience, persistence, and using their memory. Sometimes as adults we forget how much kids can learn through play.
Clipboard and Pen
The Trip Clip clipboard and pen are great complements to the unlimited mazes. The half-size clipboard is great for small hands, and the attached pen doesn’t get lost. You can print a large number of mazes, staple them together at the top, and slip them into a clipboard for lots of entertainment on the go for your kids. Here’s a picture a customer sent me of her daughter doing mazes on a trip they took.
The 4-color pen is also a nice way to enhance doing mazes. Your kids can switch color every time they hit a dead end, so they can see visually how many times they had to try again. Your kids can keep track of how often they’re able to solve a maze in one go, without having to double back/change colors.
Making a Maze Activity Book
The Trip Clip’s Activity Book feature does all the work to generate as many different mazes as you want at a chosen difficulty level.
Check the checkbox for any activities you want in your activity book. Use the drop down to select your difficulty level, and then choose how many pages you want to create. You can do this for most of the activities available on The Trip Clip website. It’s a great way to quickly create a whole bunch of fun activities to print for your kids before each trip.
FREE Mazes
If you want to give these a try before making a purchase decision, you can try some mazes for free. All of the difficulty levels are in this packet so you can figure out what age is right for you kids.
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