Squirrel and the Acorn Maze

About this worksheet

A 16 by 17 fall maze with long corridors and plenty of dead ends: the squirrel at the top has to reach its pile of acorns before winter. Made for ages 7 to 10 and for grown-ups at the kids' table who want something harder than a coloring page. The only path through is drawn in red on page 2. Take your time: every hard puzzle is solvable by logic alone. Trace the correct path with a highlighter once you solve it.

This maze by the numbers

On this 16 x 17 grid the only correct path runs through 60 of the 272 squares (about 22%) and turns 36 times between START and FINISH. It has 31 dead ends where a wrong turn stops, and most kids at this level finish it in about 4 minutes. Bonus challenge: after you reach FINISH, color the 60 squares of the right path in one color, then hunt down all 31 dead ends and mark each one with an X. If you count fewer than 31, keep looking!

Tips for using it

• Color the start and finish arrows in green and red.
• Pull a three-page packet per child for the short school week: one math page, one word puzzle and one gratitude page at their level.
• Print the answer keys (page 2) once and clip them to a folder so early finishers can check their own work.
• For a mixed-age family table, give every child the same activity at a different level: the picture word search for the five-year-old, the dinner table word search for the nine-year-old.

Printing tips

Download the PDF and print at 100% (or “fit to page” on A4). Page 1 is the worksheet and page 2 is the answer key with the answers in red; print just page 1 if you want to keep the answers for checking. Free for personal, family and classroom use.