My six year old son just plotted a route from our house to his grandmother's, a non-trivial, 45 minute drive on several different roads. His route choice isn't great, but it shows a great deal of simplification. And no one has ever really sat down with him and taught him how to read a map too much. It was sort of unbelievable. He is still lukewarm to the idea of O races, tho. Doesn't measure up to playing with K-NEX.