The Minotaur and a Maze

The girls have been having a wonderful time studying Ancient Greece. They have especially enjoyed the mythology and hero stories. One of their favorites was the story of the Minotaur and Thesus. They both have always enjoyed mazes and I think that was the allure here. They thought it would be fun to make their own labyrinth for their friends to try out at our homeschool group's international night. It was a big project with a lot of little detail, but it was a lot of fun too. Below you will see some of the construction steps they went through.

Above you can see Sarah cutting pieces for the walls. She had previously draw out the maze on the paper, and then cut along the lines into a piece of corrugated cardboard. The wall pieces slid into the slits in the cardboard.

Here Hannah is hot gluing the joints of the walls together. Earlier in the day she had painted them. If anyone is interested in making their own maze, I suggest you paint your cardboard BEFORE you cut your wall pieces. We learned the hard way and had to take the wall apart, paint it and put it back together. It was a project just to keep the pieces in order so the maze would fit back together.

Here are Thesus and the Minotaur in the finished maze. Sarah made the pieces from pictures she found on the Internet and dowels. You can move them through the maze quite easily.

Here is the completed maze. It really is cool and not to easy to solve.

Here is a supply list if you would like to give this project.

• Lid of a copy paper box.
• Piece of Corrugated Cardboard the same size as the box top
• Thin Cardboard (we used cereal boxes)
• Box Cutter
• Paper Cutter
• Scissors
• Paint & Brushes
• Dowel
• Hot Glue Gun
• Card Stock

A hint for drawing a maze. Use two different color crayons the thickness you want your path to be. One color will be the solution. The other color will be all the wrong paths. Sarah did this and then covered it with another piece of paper, taped both pieces to the window and traced all the paths. This was what we then used to cut the paths in the corrugated cardboard.