The leaves are turning orange, the temperature is dropping and the nights are drawing in. This can mean only one thing – Halloween is right around the corner! So how do you keep a class full of excited students on task and learning, whilst still having some fun over this spooky period? With a Halloween classroom escape room of course!
Why Classroom Escape Rooms?
I love classroom escape rooms and Halloween is the perfect excuse for this fun and engaging activity, whilst also covering curriculum standards. There are so many benefits to escape room games including developing your students’ teamwork and communication skills as they work together to solve challenges. Not only are they ideal for reviewing concepts, they are also great for developing logic and problem solving skills. Most importantly, they are heaps of fun and create a memorable experience your students will love!
Halloween Math Escape Room
Take a break from the norm with this fun Halloween Math Escape Room. It is perfect to use as a review activity for 2-digit addition and subtraction, fully aligned with 2nd Grade CCSS. The Halloween theme begins with a spooky letter to set the scene, which tells students they are trapped in haunted house and must solve a series of challenges. With each successfully completed challenge, the team will collect a key, which they will need in order to escape the haunted house!
Maths Skills Covered
This Halloween Math Escape Room covers a number of 2nd Grade math skills and standards. These include:
- Adding and subtracting within 100
- adding up to four two-digit numbers
- Solving word problems
- Missing number
- Adding and subtracting within 20 using mental strategies
- Identifying odd and even numbers
As well as 2nd Grade Math standards, students will also crack codes, solve a riddle and work their way through a maze!
How to use the Halloween Classroom Escape Room
This escape room can be played as a printed paper version (with the option for a scavenger hunt style game) or it can also be played as a digital activity using Google Forms. Students can play the activity in pairs or small teams of around 3-4 members.
Printable Escape Room
The printable version includes clues, keys and envelope covers for each team completing the escape room. If you have several groups playing the scavenger hunt-style game at the same time, the printable includes 4 additional color-coded sets of clues to assign to each team. This means that for each team, the challenges are in a different order. This will prevent several teams all looking for their key in the same location at the same time.
Halloween Escape Room Clues
How do you organize classroom escape room clues? The escape room can be played as a scavenger hunt style where the clues are placed around the classroom near to the answer location posters. Each answer is a spooky location or object, all included in the escape room as posters. Stick the location posters around your classroom, for example on doors, cupboards, bookcases etc. Not all location cards will be used as some are ‘red herrings’. Students should be able to clearly view these location cards throughout the activity and choose the correct one as the solution to each puzzle in order to locate the key and next clue.
If you do not wish to use the location cards, which provides extra challenge in the activity, as the class teacher, you could check each team’s answers before handing them the next clue, or assign students as ‘clue holders’ to do this job.
Digital Google Forms Escape Room
As well as the printable version, a digital Google Forms version is also included, which is no-prep. All you need to do is assign it to your students via Google Classroom. It’s as easy as that! Not only is it no-prep, it is also self checking, so instant feedback is given to students on whether they have the correct answer or not. This is a total time saver!
If you’d like to find out more about this Halloween Classroom Escape Room, check it out here where you can take a look at the preview to see all the activities included.
Happy Halloween!