These free printable dinosaur mazes for preschoolers are a fun, easy way to help your child improve their fine motor skills, problem solving, and persistence. Use them as a print and play no-prep activity or laminate them for repeated use. Your dino-loving child will love using them and you’ll love that they’re practicing important skills while having fun!
Make this activity reusable by laminating the pages or sliding them in page protectors for use with a dry erase marker or dry erase crayon. This means you can save time by printing once and providing your child with practically endless learning fun.
These dinosaur preschool mazes can help keep your dino-loving child engaged, learning, and having fun! They’re perfect for homeschool preschool parents, classroom literacy centers, and even therapists.
If your child loves dinosaurs, be sure to grab these additional free dino themed printables for toddlers and preschoolers:
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What are prewriting skills?
Mazes are one of several ways to help your child improve their prewriting skills.
Prewriting skills are all skills that must be learned before writing.
Prewriting skills help your child hold and use a pencil correctly and comfortably, draw, color, and copy shapes. These skills prepare your child to write legibly and confidently.
Your child won’t magically learn how to hold a pencil correctly the first time they pick one up. That’s okay! They need plenty of practice.
Unfortunately, more children than ever before are entering school with under-developed fine motor skills. Researchers have observed an inverse relationship between the amount of screen time a preschooler receives and their fine motor skills. In other words, the more screen time they have, the worse their fine motor skills are (source).
Luckily, it’s very easy to provide your child with opportunities to build their fine motor and prewriting skills. For a more in-depth look at prewriting skills and how to teach them to preschoolers, please see this post with free printable dinosaur tracing paths.
How to print and use preschool mazes
This set of dino theme mazes has five easy mazes for preschoolers. Your child can even use a finger to trace the lines if they aren’t ready for tracing with a pencil or crayon yet.
Materials needed:
- Free dinosaur maze printables. Download information is located lower in the post. Look for the big blue image that reads “click here to download.”
- Paper and a printer.
- I recommend 32 lb bright white paper. To see the difference this paper makes, stop by this post on the best paper for printables.
- Laminator, dry erase pockets, or page protectors. Optional.
- I love my inexpensive home laminator because it saves me the time and hassle of going to a copy center.
- Instead of dry erase pockets, I usually use heavy duty “secure” page protectors
- Crayons, pencils, markers, etc. for tracing
- Pencils and crayons are great for single use pages. We like Honeyscticks beeswax crayons because the colors are easy to see and they’re pure beeswax.
- Instead of a dry erase marker, grab Stabilo Woody wax crayons. They’re a wax crayon that can work as a dry erase, too! They come off easily when wiped with a lightly damp cloth or paper towel (don’t get it too wet or you might ruin the printable, even if it’s laminated). These wax crayons provide more friction than a marker (which means a greater challenge) and they don’t have fumes.
- Your child can fill the path with small manipulatives, like pompoms, using a pair of plastic tweezers.
- Your child can also just use their finger for tracing.
Featured dinosaurs include:
- Brontosaurus
- Triceratops
- T-Rex
- Stegosaurus
- Pteranodon
The Pteranodon is not truly a dinosaur. However, they lived at the same time as dinosaurs, are included in many dino books, and are commonly called “flying dinosaurs.
How to use mazes with preschoolers
First, make sure to get your download from lower down in the post.
Print the pages you want to use. All of the mazes are simple, but the first two are the easiest. They may seem absurdly easy to you, but they are a fun challenge for toddlers and young preschoolers
Demonstrate how to use the pages. You can start by tracing the path with your index finger, or you can go straight to using a marker/crayon.
I cannot say enough good things about Stabilo Woody pencils. They work on dry erase surfaces, as an art supply, and even as a watercolor crayon. They don’t have fumes like a dry erase marker and don’t instantly stain clothes, tables, and walls because they are water soluble. They’re easy to wipe off with a very slightly damp cloth or towel. My daughter accidentally got some on the white fireplace surround and it wiped off quickly and easily without staining.
You can see the Stabilo Woody pencils in action, including a video showing how vibrant the colors are and how easily they erase, in this post with free printable dino coloring pages.
- The multi-talented pencil, colouring, watercolour and wax crayon all-in-one
- Due to its small chunky shape and size it suitable for childrens hands and allows a fine grip
- High denseness and colour intensity, even on dark paper and glass - it is easy to wipe off ceramic type surfaces
If your child has trouble tracing, or if you want a new activity to keep your child’s attention, you can have your child place manipulatives to fill the path instead of tracing inside.
Pretty much anything small-ish can work for covering the path. You can use nature treasures, pompoms, balls of play dough, mathlinks cubes, etc. After placing the manipulatives, you can count together how many it took to complete the maze.
In the photo below you can see my daughter’s treasured dinosaur counting manipulatives placed along the maze path:
Free printable dinosaur mazes download
Please note that the artwork in these printables is copyright by DigitalArtsi and is used under license. Thank you, Jane, for your beautiful artwork and generous licensing.
Like all free preschool printables on The Artisan Life, these are for personal and single classroom use. You are welcome to use them with Scouts groups, home school co-ops, personal therapy clients, etc.
You are not licensed to redistribute the files or printouts to others for their personal use. Instead, please send your friends and coworkers to this page so they can download their own copies.
If you agree to these terms of use, click below:
I hope your little dino-lover enjoys these easy maze printables as much as mine does!
Make sure to grab these additional free dinosaur printables for kids while you’re here:
Dinosaur Printables & Toys
Your dino-loving child will adore these dinosaur themed printable activities and toys.
Preschoolers and toddlers love do a dot coloring pages! Make them no mess when you provide round coding label stickers instead of dauber markers.
Your little dino-lover will have so much fun coloring these free printable dinosaur coloring pages with names! Download each dino individually so you can get exactly the dinosaurs your child is asking for.
Help your preschooler or kindergartener practice counting with these colorful number building puzzles.
These free printable dinosaur prewriting tracing paths are fun, low-prep, and easy to make reusable when you lamiante the pages or slip them in a page protector.
Help your child learn their numbers in Spanish and English with these free printable dinsaur ten frames.
This dinosaur matching game will challenge your toddler or preschooler with three levels of difficulty. You can also use it as a game of dinosaur Memory and get the whole family playing!
Everyone can play this free printable dinosaur bingo becuase no reading is required!
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