How To Make An Escape Room Classroom Activity

The classroom is a great place to implement new and fun methods for enhancing kids’ creativity, encouraging their logical thinking, and developing their team spirit.

Being a cool teacher nowadays means having the ability to find a balance between creativity, fun, and education. But I’m not necessarily talking about formal education. There are so many things our kids should learn outside the curriculum program, which are equally important for their growth.

The escape room games offer unconventional opportunities for kids to learn how to complement each other in the pursuit of the same goal. In other words, team building is one of the things that kids learn during these games. But that’s not all, in just one hour of activity they get a concentrated experience of mental gymnastics, logical thinking, adrenaline rush, and feeling they are doing something important.

They get a chance to enter their fantasies while being in the class and learning life-improving skills. Isn’t that a perfect activity?

With all that said, let me give you some tips on how to make an escape room classroom activity.

Professor Swen’s Lab

Houdini’s Secret Room

Wooka Booka Island

The Gilded Carcanet

2. Set up the game

Usually, these ready-to-play kits take no more than 15 minutes of preparation before the kids arrive. It’s one more reason why it’s a better (and probably way cheaper) option for you as a game master. If you plan to create a room from scratch, have in mind that the setup time will expand to hours of preparations, which means that you have to stay late in order to prepare the class for the next day. In this rush, you always increase the chances of setting up something wrong, which will probably destroy the game flow. That’s one more reason why you should grab a ready-to-play escape room.

For example in Houdini’s secret room kit, except for the game file, you get an easy-to-follow set-up guide, solutions guide, extras (in a form of posters and invitations), and a mobile app to guide you through your adventure.

You probably wonder if there is enough space for the whole classroom to play it simultaneously. Of course, there is! You need as much space as every other classroom activity. Since there will probably be more teams, each group should have a personal corner (table) where all the brainstorming would take place. Don’t forget to grab some scissors, pen, and paper glue for each team, they are usually part of every printable escape game.

3. Decorating the classroom

The decorations add up a lot to the whole experience. We recommend you turn on your creativity and take your time to decorate the room. Kids will love to see their everyday classroom turned into a fantastic escape room with all those decorations around. Trust me, your rating will rise by at least 10 points, as soon as the kids enter the classroom.

Start with some of the posters that usually are included in the ready-to-play kits. Hang them around to make a great mood. Let’s say you are playing Houdini’s secret room. Grab some “crystal” balls, hats, sticks, black tablecloths etc., and place them around the desks.

Turn down the lights and place some candles around. This can be very effective, especially if they are going to play it in a darker room.

For example in the Wooka Booka Island (for 5-8 year-olds) the game master is playing the role of Lau Kamau – the giant guardian. Our game designers found a great way to fit the game master into the game, which offers a better experience and more fun for everyone.

By following the cheat sheet you stay on the right track during the whole game, monitor the kids’ progress, and help them if necessary. You are going to be directly involved throughout the game, as you read the intros for every challenge, explain the game rules, and play games with the kids.

There is no better way to cement your legacy as the coolest teacher in the school!

One more advantage of the printable and ready-to-play escape rooms is that you can print as many copies as you want and proportionate to that create as many teams as you wish.

So no matter how big (or small) your class is, these games are just suitable for everyone.

The best way to organize your classroom is to divide all kids into groups of a maximum of 5 players and print one copy for each team. This way the teams will simultaneously compete against each other, for who will be the first to escape.

In case you have a small group of kids (maximum 5 players), only one group will fight to escape the room, or whatever the goal is. The team spirit will not disappear by any means, because they will have to fight against the clock together.

8. Give them a reward

This is a great opportunity to reward those kids who show the most determination, teamwork abilities, and a will to succeed. What you can do is create a special reward such as a diploma for the best puzzle solvers, а commendation, or anything else you want to prize them with. 

Next, to motivate them even more, place the reward into a box and lock it with a real padlock. Just remember that the solution for the last challenge should be a 3 or 4-digit combination and the padlock should be set accordingly to that combination.

This way only the first team that opens the box will get the reward, while other teams can still proceed with solving the game on their printable materials.