A fun activity for the whole family

I have been thinking hard on how to add value to this newsletter. To do that, I need to understand who my audience is, so today I have assumed that some of you are parents. And as a parent myself, I love to find creative activity to do alongside my kids. So I dove back into my childhood to thought about the creative activities I loved doing as a kid.

One thing that I was doing on a regular basis was to draw my own paper-based labyrinth. So I have used my kids as testers (7 y.o. and 10 y.o.) for this activity to gauge how fun it is for them and they actually really enjoyed the process! So here it is, I am gonna try to share my approach to it and give you some tips on how to do it.

Materials

Here is what you need:

• Squared paper - any type as long as you have a grid on your paper,

• A thick tip pen, marker, or any other type of pen that makes a thick line,

• A ruler is optional,

• Kids, friends or family because the aim is to give your completed labyrinth to somebody else to resolve and get theirs in return (or not),

• A rainy day and a roaring fireplace are best!

How to

Step 1: Define the extent of your labyrinth

Start by drawing a box (or combination of boxes) with one entry and one exit - mark those with arrows for direction. You could have multiple entries and exit if you want!

Follow the paper grid as well as you can but you don’t HAVE to use a ruler, only if you want. Keep in mind that it is better to start with a small box/extent as the larger your starting box is, the more time it’ll take to complete it.

In the below example, I went fancy with my shape but a regular box would work perfectly!

Step 2: Start building the inside walls

Start to fill in your defined extent with RANDOMLY placed horizontal AND vertical lines of a length of 3 to 4 grid blocks. Don’t overthink it, just draw randomly placed lines!

Some comments for this step:

• Spread them over the entire box/labyrinth extent,

• Draw one vertical line followed by one horizontal line follwed by a vertical one and an horizontal one again, etc…,

• You can touch the walls of the extent but minize them as much as you can.

• Use 3 or 4 grid block length for the length of your walls (as illustrated above, my walls are mostly 4 blocks long, with some 3 and 2).

Step 3: Keep on filling in with walls

Keep drawing walls (horizontal then vertical then horizontal, etc.), try to keep away from previously drawn walls to leave as many route options as possible (for now)! Try to fill in most of your labyrinth extent with walls.

Step 4: Start blocking and limiting paths options

That is where things are getting trickier. You are now “entering” your labyrinth, start at the entry and try to “see” some path and start connecting walls to walls to block routes and keep only one, a difficult one, not a straight line obviously.

If you are struggling with this step you can draw the solution VERY lightly with a pencil and block routes based on your solution, then erase the solution and voila!

Try to minimize the number of walls you are using, the aim is for the user to enter a route without seeing that it is going to be blocked down the path. If you have too many blocked walls, it gets too obvious and too easy.

Step 5: Have fun

Swap your completed labyrinth with the person next to you and take his/hers labyrinth and have fun! My 10 year old son had a lot of fun, my 7year old daughter needed a bit more guidance but enjoyed the process nonetheless.

Step 6: Optional Boss Room

Extra material:

• a dice

If you want to ramp up the fun and the challenge, you can plan a shortcut going through a BOSS ROOM. Basically, you give the option to the user to use a shortcut but he/she will have to beat a boss. To beat the boss, you will have to roll a dice and make a certain result (e.g. 5 & 6 on a normal dice) to beat it and use the shortcut. If the boss wins, the user has to start again but the door to the boss room is now closed!

My boss was a ghost, my 7 year old daughter’s boss was a poo monster…she was obviously inspired…

I would love, love, love to hear from you! Please let me know if you have found it valuable, if you have tried it and if you had additional tips and/or tricks.

Take care!

Cesar

p.s: if you like what you are reading, please share it with friends and family, and get them to subscribe to my newsletter, there are more activities coming ;)