Teacher’s Brain

Thanksgiving Escape Rooms For Kids

As we approach the holiday season, your students might be growing weary of the usual classroom activities. Are you detecting a little bit of restlessness when you assign a reading comprehension passage? Don’t worry, I have the perfect activity to inject some life into your reading practice- escape rooms!

 Students will have a blast using their reading skills to solve the puzzles and escape the room. Trust me, it will be one of the most memorable activities of the year! 

There is even a Thanksgiving Escape Room perfect for the fall- The Thanksgiving Mystery. 

To successfully complete this activity, students have to “break the box” to “escape the room”. As they try to solve the mystery, they will practice their reading skills as well as using teamwork and critical thinking skills. 

thanksgiving escape room

 

Your students will be having so much fun trying to escape, they might not even notice that they are developing higher level comprehension skills. Application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation are all necessary to open the box. Rather than using simple worksheets, you will be letting your students develop their higher order thinking skills while having fun! 

Thanksgiving Escape Room

This Thanksgiving Mystery video will introduce the activity to your students and hook them in.

The Thanksgiving Escape the Room resource includes all the steps you need to engage your students in the Thanksgiving Mystery. After a little bit of preparation following the easy checklist, you’ll be ready to guide your students through their adventure. 

The escape room can be used if your children are in the classroom, or easily adapted for at home learners. Your kids are going to have a blast exploring the different steps including a corn maze!

For more Thanksgiving fun, check out my Thanksgiving Turkey Run Digital Escape Room.

This activity would be perfect for the days leading up to Thanksgiving break. Have you used escape rooms in your classroom yet? Tell me in the comments! 

thanksgiving escape room

 

 

Why Escape Rooms Are Great For Elementary

You probably already know that escape rooms have become hugely popular in primary grades recently. They’re exciting, unique, engaging, and make your students think! What’s not to love? They’re perfect for any grade in elementary.

If you haven’t heard of this before, you may be wondering what escape rooms are. 

An escape room is an escape game where your students have to work together in real life to discover clues, solve puzzles, and complete tasks in order to escape. But how do you do an escape room with 5 and 6 year old kindergarten students? 

It may seem obvious, but you don’t actually  need to have expensive locks, fancy boxes, or big prizes. My escape rooms meet standards, don’t need locks, encourage 100% engagement, and get kids to work together in teams to help each other open any box and escape their room. The activities and puzzles are grade level appropriate so they will be just challenging enough to be fun. 

My escape rooms have 3 to 5 tasks for students to solve in order to get their next clue.  They also have video hooks to build anticipation. You can make it fun by letting them escape the room and go to recess, the library, or really get the excitement up with a cookie party!

Escape rooms make a GREAT Holiday activity, especially. The Christmas Escape will add to your students learning all about Holidays Around the World!

Students find clues, solve puzzles and work as a team to help save the holidays while Santa is on a VACA! It has a fun video hook!

“We loved doing this! I didn’t have a wooden box or real keys! This resource provided everything but the treat at the end! I highly recommend and will be purchasing more!”
There is a digital escape FOUND HERE if needed.

The Halloween theme will add a spooky and fun twist. 

This Halloween Escape Room is for kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade students. It includes step-by-step instructions that will guarantee student engagement while your students work together to find the missing classroom pumpkin that was stolen by the werewolf.

escape rooms

Check out this escape room Halloween Mystery video to hook them in! 

Want to see this Halloween Escape Room in action? Check out this fun video from The Magical Teacher to see how she used in her classroom for a thrilling Halloween mystery. 

The MOST POPULAR Escape the Room is the Sight Word Mystery Escape! Students work together to solve mysteries all involving sight words.  This escape is EDITABLE, so you can tailor the words to meet your needs.

Do you use escape rooms in your classroom? Let me know in the comments!

escape rooms

Looking for more Halloween activities, check out my post here for Halloween crafts and center ideas!