February 1, 2024

Top 5 Reasons Why Your Child Should Practice Mazes at Home

Mazes are a huge hit with therapists and children alike! While mazes are lots of fun and provide a sufficient challenge for children, they also help therapists to address a variety of skills within your child’s therapy session.

Mazes are a huge hit with therapists and children alike!  While mazes are lots of fun and provide a sufficient challenge for children, they also help therapists to address a variety of skills within your child’s therapy session.  Mazes can be taped to a wall at your child’s eye-level so that he can work on a vertical surface.  This mimics a chalkboard or an easel board and promotes wrist extension and copying from a board (like in a classroom).

Below are several reasons to practice mazes with your child at home:

  • Problem solving:  Mazes help your child to work on his executive functioning skills, such as planning and brainstorming various strategies (e.g. starting from the beginning of the maze or working backwards from the end of maze).
  • Fine motor control:  Mazes require your child to control his pencil through the maze without hitting the black lines. This means that he must take his time rather than rushing, in order to have greater success.  Progress can be observed as your child bumps into the black lines less and less as he gains greater control of his writing utensil.  Children use fine motor control in order to produce correct letter formation and legible handwriting.
  • Visual motor:  Mazes require your child to use his eyes to scan the worksheet in order to find possible solutions.  Scanning is a great skill used for reading and writing, as it is important to scan from the left side of the paper to the right side.
  • Grading of an activity:  Mazes can be broken down into different steps.  For instance, first have your child start by moving his finger, next a pencil, then a marker through the maze.  This helps your child to solve the same maze three times consecutively, which allows the skill to sink-in better.
  • Confidence:  Mazes are perfect fine motor activities to help boost your child’s confidence.  Have your child begin with a simple maze to provide immediate success, and then have him work towards completing mazes of increased difficulty.

Fine motor and visual motor skills can be practiced in a wide variety of ways, including mazes.  Mazes are a great way to work on handwriting without just writing letters and words. There are many websites that offer free printable maze worksheets for a variety of age levels and themes.  An internet search such as, “simple mazes for 4-year-olds,” will produce a variety of mazes and printable activities that are perfect for practicing these important skills at home!

Download our Guide for Families

We know that choosing a local ABA facility can be a hard decision. We’ve created an informational guide to help you understand more about the questions you should be asking while meeting with different providers.

Although we talk about our services here, our highest goal is for you to feel comfortable and knowledgeable about picking a provider that is the best fit for your needs. You are making a decision that will impact the entire trajectory of your child’s life!
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The cover of the NSPT Guide for Families, which helps families to figure out the questions to ask when picking an ABA provider.

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Testimonials

Success looks different for every child... But we bet we have a story that matches your child's needs. Like James, who started with us as non-speaking and lacking the ability to initiate and maintain social interactions. Today, he can speak complete sentences, clearly state his needs, and navigate social interactions with his friends!

Our infant daughter was in physical therapy with Anna Zahn for about five months.  Anna was consistent, patient, and wonderful with our daughter.  Anna was also clear in her communications with us as parents which helped us understand our daughter's progress and needs, as well as how we could help our daughter at home.  While we are proud that our daughter graduated PT, we will miss Anna's warmth and kindness.

Emily

I love this place! Chista is an amazing person, so sweet and kind and very professional in her work. All staff are very kind with children. I feel happy to find this place for my daughter. Thank you!!!

Maria Di Rita

I cannot say enough nice things about the staff! My son worked with Khadija as his ABA therapist and is finishing up this week with his OT, Sabrina. They were really instrumental in helping us navigate a new diagnosis. Both were so easy to approach with questions. From Leeann at the front desk to the RBTs (Alex, Rabbia, Molly, and many others), we always felt so welcomed. It seems like the staff genuinely enjoy their jobs, consistently offering feedback and suggestions on how to help my son.

Jennifer Peyer

We have been working with the amazing team at NSPT for many years. They have been essential in understanding and supporting our child. I recommend their services to anyone looking for their specific type of support.Posted to

Monica Terése Carranza

They are so sweet and kinds persons with professionalism and really worried about the kids and how help they to get new skills and moving forward with knowledge.

Alejandra M.

NSPT is fantastic! All of the staff are wonderful, accomodating, and make you feel welcome and comfortable. Alan is fantastic - he has helped our family tremendously and has such patience and purpose in everything he does.

Alex Ehrhardt

North Shore Pediatric Therapy has been amazing.  They have done a great job adjusting to the specific needs of my autistic child.

Matt Nakanishi

My 12 yr old son has a lovely support team in Robert (Social Work) and Lindsay (OT)! He gains so much from his sessions & I gain so much from the communication and brainstorming! Thanks!

Jennie Meyer

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