Animal Mazes Activity Book: 30 Easy, Medium and Hard Mazes with Answers (Free PDF)

Who this book is for

This is a book of thirty animal mazes for children from about age 4 to 8. Each maze has an animal at the START and the thing it is looking for at the FINISH: a bee flies to a flower, a monkey climbs for a banana, an octopus searches for a treasure chest. The child draws a path from the animal to its goal without crossing a wall. That small story is often enough to get a young child to pick up a pencil and keep going.

The mazes grow slowly. The first ones, on pages 4 to 13, are only five to seven squares wide, with corridors about 17 to 25 mm (roughly 0.7 to 1 inch) wide, so a four-year-old can follow a path with a fat crayon. The medium mazes add more turns and more places to go wrong, and the ten hard mazes at the end are as big as 16 squares wide and are meant for children who like a real puzzle. Because the book is in order, a child can finish the easy section, feel proud, and move on when ready.

Every animal is a clear black-and-white line drawing that a child can color after the maze is solved, and the goals are in full color. Each page ends with a short fun fact about the animal. The answer key at the back shows every solution, so a parent or teacher can help a child who is stuck without having to solve the maze first. If you would rather make your own mazes of a size you choose, our maze worksheet generator makes a new one every time you click.

What is inside the Animal Mazes Activity Book

The book has 40 pages, and every page is numbered in the bottom corner, so you can print one section at a time. Every maze page has the animal and a START sign on one side of the maze and the goal and a FINISH sign on the other. On most pages the animal is at the top and the goal at the bottom, and on a few pages it is the other way round, so a bee can fly down to a flower, but a monkey climbs up to the banana.

Start here (pages 1–3)

The cover shows a sample maze with its pink answer route. Page 2 is the page for adults. It explains how to use the book in six steps and shows the START and FINISH signs, and it has a box for your child’s name. Page 3 is the contents. It shows all 30 animals with their goals in three rows, so a child can pick the maze they like best.

Easy mazes (pages 4–13)

Ten mazes between 5 × 5 and 7 × 7 squares. The walls are thick and the corridors wide, so a crayon or a thick marker fits easily. The route from START to FINISH is short, and there are only a few places where a child has to choose.

Medium mazes (pages 14–23)

Ten mazes between 8 × 7 and 11 × 10 squares. There are more turns, more junctions and more dead ends, and the route is about twice as long as in the easy mazes. A pencil or a thin marker works best.

Hard mazes (pages 24–33)

Ten mazes between 12 × 10 and 16 × 14 squares. The corridors are narrow, so a sharp pencil is a good choice. A child has to plan ahead, notice dead ends early and sometimes go back and try another way. The biggest maze has 224 squares, and the route from START to FINISH goes through 85 of them.

Answer key, certificate and back cover (pages 34–40)

Pages 34 to 38 show all 30 solutions, six on a page, with the route drawn as a pink line from a green dot at the START to a star at the FINISH. Page 39 is a certificate of achievement with lines for the name, the date and a parent or teacher signature, and page 40 is the back cover.

How hard are the mazes?

The table shows the three levels. The width of the corridors is measured on the printed page, and it is the same on US Letter and A4, because the mazes are the same size on both. The route length is the number of squares the path passes through on the way from START to FINISH.

A longer route is not the only thing that makes a maze harder. The number of junctions on the way matters just as much, because every junction is a place where a child can take a wrong turn. On the route from START to FINISH the easy mazes have 3 to 4 junctions, the medium mazes 7 to 8 and the hard mazes 12 to 14. Every maze has its own shape, so there is no pattern to learn.

Every maze has exactly one path

This matters more than it sounds. A maze with two ways through can confuse a child who is told “there is only one way”. Every maze in this book has exactly one route from START to FINISH, and every square can be reached. We checked each maze by computer, and we also checked the printed pages themselves by solving the picture of each page, in both paper sizes, and comparing the result with the answer key.

What children practice with mazes

Pencil control. Drawing a line between two walls is a steering task. The child has to slow down at the turns, keep the pencil in the corridor and stop at the end. It is practice in controlling a line, which is the same skill used in tracing and early writing. The corridors in the easy mazes are wide, and in the hard mazes they are narrow, so a child can build up control step by step.

Looking ahead. A maze is a small planning problem. Many children start by drawing straight into the first corridor. After a few mazes they learn to look at the junction first, to follow the path with a finger or the eyes, and to spot a dead end before they enter it. That habit of thinking before acting is useful well beyond mazes.

Visual tracking. Following a path through a busy picture with the eyes is a skill used in reading, where the eyes have to follow a line of text from left to right. The maze pages give children plenty of practice at it.

Persistence. Every maze has a dead end somewhere. A child who meets one learns that it is fine to go back and try again. The pencil can be erased, a different color can mark a second try and the answer key is there if the frustration grows too large.

Vocabulary and stories. Each page names an animal and the place it is going, and the fun fact tells the child one thing about the animal. Talk about where each animal lives and why it wants to get to its goal.

What it is not. Mazes are not a handwriting course. They build the control and the attention that handwriting needs. When your child is ready for letters, move on to the Pre-Writing Lines and Shapes Book or the ABC Tracing Book.

Tips for a child who gets stuck

• Use a finger first. Let your child trace the route with a finger or the back of a pencil before drawing. It costs nothing and it can be rubbed out for free.
• Look at the FINISH sign. Many mazes are easier to solve from the end. Ask your child to put a finger on the goal and follow the path back to the animal.
• Mark dead ends. A small cross at the end of a dead end tells the child “I’ve been here”. Children enjoy this, and it makes the maze easier to read.
• Use a different color for a second try. It stops one wrong turn from spoiling the page.
• Talk, but do not take over. Ask “Which way do you think?” and “What do you see ahead?” instead of pointing to the path. Look at the answer key only when your child asks for help or when the frustration is more than the fun.
• Go back a level. If a medium maze is too hard, a few more easy mazes will not hurt. Repeating an easy maze with a different color is also fine.

Printing and pencils

Print at 100% (Actual size) on one side of the paper, and choose US Letter or A4 to match your printer. The mazes are the same in both books, and the walls and the corridors are the same size. The only difference is the shape of the page. Ordinary copy paper is fine for pencils, crayons and washable markers. Use thicker paper if you want to use paint markers or watercolors.

Choose the writing tool to match the level. A thick crayon or a jumbo pencil works for the easy mazes, a regular pencil or a thin marker for the medium mazes and a sharp pencil for the hard ones. The animals are line drawings, so a child can color them with the same crayons. The goal pictures are already in color. They print in shades of gray on a black-and-white printer, which works fine. To save ink, print the book in grayscale, because the mazes themselves are navy blue and print clearly in black.

You can print just the pages you need. For example, pages 4–13 are the easy section, pages 14–23 the medium section and pages 24–33 the hard section. Print the answer key (pages 34–38) only for yourself, or keep it for the adult in the room.