Crack the Codes, Save the Workshop!

This Christmas-themed escape room game is a perfect end-of-year activity for your class to demonstrate their teamwork and communication skills.

Keep your students engaged during the final days of school with some fun problem-solving that can help consolidate what they have learned across the school year.

Will Your Students Save Christmas? 🎄

The Save Santa’s Workshop Whole-Class Escape Game includes instructions to help implement the game and introduce the scenario that your students will enter.

There are notes that can be distributed to students to introduce the game as a shared reading experience or a one-page introduction you can read aloud to the class.

The locations where students will need to visit and solve clues include:

• The Wrapping Room – students find particular presents based on logical descriptions
• The Candy Cane Chutes – students tinker with rotating sections of an elaborate maze that can cause their paths to change
• The Assembly Line – students determine how much material they need to use based on a flow chart that shows how to convert some items into others
• The Reindeer Stables – students interpret cryptic clues to determine which reindeer stables are important
• The Mail Room – students decipher a message written in a special Christmas code.

An Interactive Final Escape

Be sure to download the interactive PowerPoint attached as a drop-down menu item! This anchors the whole experience and allows the students to test if their final combination is correct.

1. Open the PowerPoint and start the Slide Show from the beginning slide. This is an engaging first look that will grab your students’ attention!
2. Click the ‘Begin’ button (or anywhere on the screen) to progress to the padlock that your students will need to open.
3. Once your students have their final combination, they can enter it into the padlock. If they are correct, an animation will play, unlocking the vault and displaying all the presents! If they are incorrect, the lock will flash an ‘Incorrect’ message and will automatically reset. The students must check their answers/add up and try again.

A Differentiated Christmas Activity

This experience caters to multiple ability levels. While the way each puzzle needs to be solved remains the same, the content/maths required differs. There are three separate Workshop Induction Booklets (the worksheets the students will use); shapes on the front cover identify which version is which as follows:

• circle – two-digit addition, one-digit multiplication/division
• triangle – two- and three-digit addition, one-digit multiplication/division, knowledge of mixing primary colours
• pentagon – the above, plus order of operations, multiplying numbers by 100, knowing what the term ‘product’ means when performing an operation.

If your students save the workshop super-fast, look at our Christmas word searches below. They can work on these while the rest of the class finds the combination!

teaching resource

Christmas Word Search

Help spread holiday cheer with this Christmas word search.

teaching resource

Christmas Word Search - Santa's Reindeer

A word search using the names of Santa's Reindeer.