Escape Room - for kids!

May 27, 2017 12:31 PM

Help me come up with an escape room for 15 -20 seven year olds. Themes? Clues? Ideas?

My kids are turning 7 in a few weeks, and have requested an escape room themed birthday party. Since there are two of them, our guest list will be quite large. We're thinking of breaking the kids into teams with an adult to help each group. Any idea for good clues?

These kids can (mostly) read, they're all in French Immersion, so clues can involve (simple) French, basic arithmetic, and trivia about things kids in grade 1 know (Paw Patrol, Lego, Lego ninjago, Lego Nexo knights, spiderman, superman, Magic treehouse, minecraft, ect.)

Give me your best ideas! We're also aware that this might just devolve into a scavenger hunt, so scavenger hunt clues are also ok. The party will be outdoors in a park / field / splash pad area, or inside a community centre if it rains

posted by Valancy Rachel to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (7 answers total)

There are a tone of free ideas at the breakout edu Facebook group. It was aimed at schools but has been expanded. You don't need to breakout kit (you can buy the components or equivilant in stores).
posted by saucysault at 1:51 PM on May 27, 2017

Best answer: I've done a sort of combined scavenger hunt and puzzle room for a couple of my son's birthday parties. The teams were given a note in a brightly colored envelope with a hint to where to find the next note, which would have a hint on where to find the next note, etc. The last note (the 10th) told them to build something out of Lego together. This was all done in our house, and with five teams (of 2 or 3 kids), I needed to come up with 45 different notes and places to hide them. The first party's theme was Star Wars/Star Trek/Dr Who and an example note was "The Empire Strikes Back starts on the planet Hoth" (Leading to the next note in the freezer). All the details, rules and examples of hints in my blog post: How can you tell if you have a light saber or a heavy saber?
posted by ShooBoo at 4:42 PM on May 27, 2017

Is there something in particular those kids are really big fans of? You could set up a quest by their favourite character. Maybe even have it in French so that some of the puzzles involve translation.

Lego + Minecraft suggests puzzles that they'd need to build to get the answer. Maybe create a Lego shape, draw a clue on it, then disassemble it and leave the bricks w a set of instructions?
posted by divabat at 5:53 PM on May 27, 2017

Best answer: I've been running escape rooms for kids slightly older than that (9-12) lately. My main tips are to have lots of puzzles that are quick to solve, rather than a few that take longer (because the kids get bored and distracted if they have to stop and think about things for more than a couple of minutes), and to make sure the puzzles (or lock boxes, or whatever) cannot be brute forced, unless you have an adult watching each group very very closely.

Also, I wouldn't have more than four kids in a group, or someone will end up being left out and just watching the others solving everything. Three is about right. Or if you have enough adults to have one keep an eye on each group, they can step in now and then to remind the kids who are taking over to ask the others for their ideas.
posted by lollusc at 6:59 PM on May 27, 2017

Best answer: Get a few padlocks with letters so you can have some clues where you have to figure out the word to unlock the next clue.
posted by CathyG at 7:09 AM on May 29, 2017

Best answer: Rob Cockerman of cockeyed.com has done something similar before but again those kids were a bit older. I would read his page to see what went well and what didn't, but you might have to adjust the difficulty of the puzzles a bit. You will be the best guide, because you'll know what your kid is likely to figure out. Some seven year olds would be fine with a replacement cipher, especially given a key, while some might not be able to figure it out.
posted by koolkat at 1:46 AM on May 30, 2017

Response by poster: Update for future party planners: The party was fabulous. We did go more scavenger hunt, ending with solving a riddle to get the code for a word lock. Inside the locked box was loot bags.
Some things that worked super well:
-teams maxed out at 4 kids with 1 adult.
-bright coloured envelopes! and we pregrouped the kids into colour groupings
the envelopes all stayed with the judge (my dad). When the group adult thought the task on the card was done, they moved on to the next
-we had 10 tasks plus one riddle at the end. The riddles were all different, but each team got the same tasks in scrambled order.
-Each task was an activity or puzzle (like, what time is on the clock? Or get a picture of your group doing (stuff). Each parent had a camera / phone)
The kids loved it!
posted by Valancy Rachel at 2:00 PM on June 30, 2017