The WIM Maze at the Dorset School Games Festival

Every year, the Active Dorset Partnership organises various Schools Games Festivals, with the Dorset Summer Games being a huge multi-sport event, for many different school year groups and several hundred children, hosted on the vast playing fields of Bryanston School. The games always incorporates a smaller festival fro primary age children in years 4-6, alongside the activities for older secondary school pupils.

With so much else going on as the festival has grown, there isn't room on the fields for us to plan the conventional novice orienteering courses which we once did, and for the last few years, Jason Falconer (WSX), who is effectively the schools orienteering coach for Dorset, assisted by me and Jim Graham, have run an orienteering maze activity for the year 4-6 primary school children taking part in the festival.

The format varies a little each year but this time it was billed as the 'Play for Fun Primary Festival for Years 4-6' and each of the participating schools had been encouraged to bring a group of ten of their children who were less sporty, including "those who had social, emotional or mental health problems, those with special educational needs, or disability, and those who typically do not engage or participate in sports activities outside of the school curriculum."

On Wednesday June 21st, we had a great day out in the sunshine & wind at Bryanston. The school groups were a pretty mixed bunch and it was encouraging to see how many of them gained confidence as they progressed through the maze activity in the 30 minutes we had with each group.

Over the course of the day, we entertained around 80 children from four Poole & Bournemouth primary schools, plus their staff, and also a few older children from Lytchett School acting as assigned helpers, and the feedback from all the runners was very enthusiastic.

The maze we used had four possible 10 control courses for it, which the children mainly ran in pairs. Overall, we had 199 downloads showing that virtually everyone ran all their four courses, and plenty then had time to do two or more of the courses run in reverse control order.

The fastest recorded maze time was 1:16 for a pair on Course B, whilst the slowest was a pair on Course D who took 12:14 for their first course, (but they got their time down to 3:35 by the time they did their last run.)

It was a pretty full on day for a long retired teacher. I can't speak for the kids, but I'm knackered.

My thanks to Jason & Jim

Dick Keighley

The Mazes

Background: aerial photo of Bryanston School