Today we have a Wikki stick maze that supports skills like bilateral coordination, motor planning, and visual motor skills. This is one of our favorite wikki stick activities!
Wikki Stix maze
Want to make learning math fun and creative when the kids just want to “be done?”
Sometimes we need to practice and build math concepts just a bit more. It can be hard to find ways to get the extra practice in when the kids really just are over practicing math (again and again!)
The baby wants held, the green beans are boiling over on the stove, and the other kids are dumping bins of puzzles all over the living room. But, the second grader needs to practice regrouping triple digits just a bit more.
Outer Space Maze
For kids that love all things outer space, this outer space maze is perfect for building math skills but also visual motor work.
My four year old and I made up this 3D Outer Space maze to practice re-grouping tens and hundreds columns in three digit numbers one day while my second grader was at school. When she came home from school, she was all over it!
Mazes are a great way to practice skills needed in handwriting and math. They are a puzzle for hand-eye coordination and a visual motor workout.
Often times, kids have trouble aligning numbers in columns of ones, tens, and hundreds. A maze using hand-eye coordination like this one can help to work on that copying skill.
Materials you’ll need to make the Outer Space Maze:
(Affiliate links are included in this list and in this post.)
- Black cardstock
- Colored cardstock
- pencil
- Wikki Stix
- Marble
- Black marker
- Plastic bin (or any pan with an edge. A metal cake pan
would work well.)
3D Outer Space Maze
This activity is actually a 3d Space project as well. You’ve probably seen 3D outer space projects in the past that focus on planet size, distance between planets, and rotation around the sun. Our 3D Space project is on paper, but you can also target rotation around the sun, planet size, etc.
Directions to make this 3D space project:
- Draw rings for planet’s orbits around the sun. NOTE: We did this quickly and our outer space model is in NO way accurate in terms of size of planets or orbits. Older kids could do this as a Science project.
(Amazon affiliate link)to represent planets.
(Amazon affiliate link) onto the orbits and over the planets. Try to get them to stick right through the center of each planet. 
to write three digit numbers on both sides of the planets. 
Wikki Stix Maze
Math Maze
So, hopefully this idea will help your hands-on learner. Have fun playing and learning math…until the beans boil over!
The second grade blogger team have created hands-on learning activities with an Outer Space theme.
See what they’ve been up to:
- Toys and Games that Build Math Skills
- Harvest Mental Math
- How to Add with Regrouping
- Double Digit Addition with Re-Grouping Raccoon Craft
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
