Save Summer Vacation - Differentiated ESCAPE ROOM: End of Year: Print - Digital

This is an end of the year escape room activity, teams work together (or students work alone) to solve six challenge puzzles. Using critical thinking skills students uncover the lines to the counter-spell that unlocks summer vacation. This low-prep activity gets students thinking as they solve the puzzles and move through clues. Print and digital versions are included. Differentiated - for whole class access.

There are two Google slide versions, Easel Versions and print versions. This is an engaging game for the End of the Year!

Save Summer Vacation Escape Room

Scenario: The Spring Witch has cast a spell to freeze time, preventing summer vacation from ever arriving. Students must solve six puzzles to break the spell and bring back summer. Each puzzle unlocks a line to the counter-spell. Students assemble the counter-spell and summer commences.

Challenge 1: In the heart of the earth’s oldest forest, student’s must find the Tree of Time, whose roots delve deep into the mysteries of the earth. To solve the puzzle, students decipher ancient runes carved into the tree's trunk to reveal the first line of the counter-spell. Students use a columnar transposition cypher to find the missing words, write the words in four columns, decode the words and fill in the sentence. Note: There is an alternative puzzle that gives away the pattern in the columns to use for differentiation.

Challenge 2: Atop the highest hill, where the wind sings its oldest songs, lies the second line to the spell. Students solve the puzzle to capture the words on the wind. The witch has encoded your message in a PigPen Cipher. The same cipher said to be used by the Knights Templar. Note: There is an alternate puzzle where the cipher is easier to read.

Challenge 3: The witch had five friends hide a piece of next line to the spell in five different places. Students use the logic puzzle to find where each person hid their piece of the third line of the counter-spell.

Challenge 4: In the library's hidden garden, a message is encrypted within the words of a story. The story tells the tale of the first time the Spring Witch threatened to stop summer. Students read the passage, find the words that do not fit and then assemble them into the fourth line of the counter-spell. Note: There is an alternative puzzle where students compare two passages for differences. The different words spell the fourth line of the counter-spell.

Challenge 5: The fifth line to the counter-spell is written on rocks that form a gird on a rock wall near the river. Students use the code to uncover the fifth line of the spell.

Challenge 6: The sixth and final line of the spell is hidden deep with in the word search. Highlight the words from the Word Bank. The remaining letters spell the last line of the counter spell.