Adrian’s Maze Adventure

by Tatsiana Polenchuk

The Story:

Adrian, you began with creating an outside border. You made a dot and from it, you led the line to the top of the border, then you opened up a new path and closed it off:

- You know Tanya, I just keep adding the walls with spaces in between. I am drawing a simple maze with a path from start to finish. Though, it is not gonna be as simple as it seems. I know how to make it complicated. And as you see, it has a cool shape, right? It wouldn’t be hard to identify this shape, right? What do you think, Tanya?

- It looks like a bear paw to me, Adrian.

- That’s what I said! It is so easy to identify what kind of maze I am drawing, right? But I will make it very hard to walk through this maze.

Adrian, I was wondering what you were going to do next.

I observed you persistently designing the layout of passages and walls within your maze, and then you started to fill it in. You continually opened up new options and closed them off quickly.

- Does it still look like a Bear Paw, Tanya?

- Yes, it does, Adrian.

- Well, then... because I want my maze to be a picture maze. It is almost like generating algorithms in a video game, you know…See, I am adding a few different kinds of loops, they are not rounded loops, kind of rectangular loops. When I finish my maze I will invite my friends to follow it with a finger. Would you like to be the first to try Tanya?

- I would be honored to try it first, Adrian.

Adrian, you continued to go back and forth making crazy turns within your maze:

-This is not my first maze, you know that right, Tanya? I created so many of them that it is so easy for me to come up with any maze I want now. I do prefer to draw on a large sheet of paper. Then I can create a maze as big as I want. My maze should be bigger than my face. So I need a large size of paper.

- This dual-tip marker is so cool for drawing mazes. It makes my drawing look 3-dimensional, right Tanya? Try to look at the maze from a distance, please? Does it look 3-dimensional?

- It looks like you drew over your blueprint using a marker of a different color. The shape is easily recognizable, some details look more sharpened than others, and there’s a strong contrast between the two colors. Yes, it is a kind of dimensional drawing.

-I said, agreeing with you.

Your friends became very curious about what you were doing, Adrian. They took turns standing behind your back and observing the process of you creating a cool maze. Valuing their opinion and caring for the success of your project, you held a short conversation with your friends, asking them a simple question as to what they thought about your maze and if they would be interested in trying to “walk” through it. Of course, your friends shared how much they were intrigued and impatient to try your maze. I was excited when with a caring and inviting voice, you asked your friends “please, just give me 5 more minutes. I will be done soon”. Proudly, you let your friends try your maze, handing the maze right into their hands. You kept watching carefully how your friends used their fingertips walking through the maze, sometimes stopping and going back to the starting point.

You enjoyed their participation in your project:

- Thank you friends for thinking that my maze is really cool! I will create more cool mazes for you. Also, I hope that you have noticed that I have some paths that lead to dead ends and some that are connected back to earlier paths. They are the hardest to go through.

Right after school, you prepared and placed in your locker what you were planning to take outside: a few large sheets of paper, your dual-tip marker, and an HB pencil. The maze creation process continued outside at the playground table. I observed you explaining to your friends how to draw a perfect maze. Patiently you participated in all of the dialogues that looked like interruptions to your drawing process. Also, you were complimenting your friends when they were giving good suggestions or remarks on the maze-creating process.

What Learning is Happening Here?

Adrian,

The well-being goal * says that you shape your identity when you are pursuing your interests, passions, and strengths as you grow in your capacity to express goals, plans, and interests. You have a high degree of comprehension of what a spatial relationship is. You see the process in your mind and persistently stay on task while patiently using deduction skills way beyond your age to transfer to paper what you envision. You have a great understanding of how things connect and interrelate. Definitely, creating mazes activity challenges and occupies you. And the more you make them, the easier and quicker it becomes.

Observing your activity I have learned that you can easily create junctions that lead to new passages, and when creating junctions you are persistently focused on achieving a balance between creating passages that lead to dead ends and creating passages that lead back into earlier passages of your maze. Also, you have mastered the basic spiral additions “rectangular loops” to a maze. Through this inquiry process, you persistently kept track of an overall solution path in your mind. It was amazing to see how you were checking over your solution path once in a while moving your finger from Start to Endpoint of the maze. I observed you participating in the maze-sharing process with your friends and intentionally carrying about their learning process of walking through the maze.

What is Next? or Opportunities and Possibilities:

Adrian,

To extend your interest in generating mazes, we can offer you to create a 3-D Box Lid Maze project that incorporates art, engineering, and critical thinking, or you are welcome to explore ways of creating different kinds of mazes as Block Mazes, Number Mazes, Circle Mazes, etc. Also, you are welcome to learn about world Nature Mazes as The Maze at Missouri Botanical Garden...We can search with you information on the most famous Maze Artists and learn secrets of what makes their mazes outstanding. We would like to hear your opinion about what you would like to do next?

Circle and Block Maze

The Maze at Missouri Botanical Garden

Adrian’s Voice (typed by Adrian right after reading the story that was left open for him on the computer so he would be able to share/type his thinking):

“I like this story and would like to name it Adrian’s maze adventure. When I first started mazes my first maze was very easy so I did new things.

I wish my mazes would be in the newspaper but very rarely they would. Also, you asked me about what I would like to learn about mazes? I think I would like to keep trying to draw 3D mazes and learn about the coolest mazes in the world and the people who make them, like mazes engineers.”

Adrian’s Voice (typed 2 days later):

“My favorite site about mazes is the one we looked at yesteday, Roxie’s site. I like that she is posting children’s mazes on her site. I think she is a cool teacher. Her dinosaurs mazes are also cool, and I like the penguin mazes too. Hope my mom will let me send my maze there. If my maze will be posted there then when I will be as old as Roxie I will operate the site like hers. And thank you but I don’t want to try other mazes. I just like Roxies for now. And I like to teach Zoe, Quinn and Taylor how to draw cool mazes. Taylor wants a hat maze. I want to impress them.”

Dear Adrian’s Parents,

Please, help us to make Adrian’s dream come true: give us your permission to upload pictures of Adrian’s mazes on: https://www.roxiemunro.com/kids-make-mazes-and-more.html If you are interested, let’s talk about it whenever it is convenient for you.

Parent’s Voice:

Adrian,

With you, we are impatiently waiting for teacher Roxie’s response and can’t wait to see the pictures of your mazes be posted on the Roxies’ site. Will they be posted or not we are happy to see your friends desire to put your mazes upon the room’s window and share them with our world! Your care for your friends and desire to teach them how to create amazing mazes opened their hearts and inspired them to celebrate your achievements!

This Learning Story is just the beginning of “Adrian’s Maze Adventure.”

To Continue:

This email I received from teacher Roxie the following day. I couldn’t wait to share it with Adrian, his family and all our children!

One day later:

Adrian’s Voice (all words typed by Adrian):

“I can’t believe my dream came true! This story made me famous! I will never ever forget about this! Thank you, teachers! Yes, what? I can create more cool mazes and help my friends create cool mazes too!”

With great enthusiasm, Adrian leads the “Cool Mazes” club in our program now.

by Tatsiana Polenchuk Program Coordinator at Fulton Afterschool at Hardisty R.127 Edmonton AB.