About The Haunted Classroom
Grimsby, a ghost who lives in the classroom, has locked the door with a spell. Teams break it by solving five stations in order and building a four-digit spell code. Every answer is a password: a team brings it to the teacher, the “Gatekeeper”, and only then receives the next card.
Gaurav Tiwari built this free escape room for grades 3 to 5. Four of the five stations are math and logic (multiplication facts, a growing number pattern, a logic grid, comparing fractions), and the last one is a short reading passage about time words, so it doubles as a Halloween math lesson. Teams of 3 or 4 work best; a full class plays as several teams at their own desks. A table-top version for home, with a parent as Gatekeeper, uses the same cards. The author’s planning estimate is 40 to 50 minutes for a grade 4 class, not a timed playtest.
How to play in one minute
- Print one mission sheet and one set of station cards per team, plus supported cards for teams that need them. Cut out the hint cards and keep them.
- Read the mission aloud, let teams pick jobs (Reader, Solver, Checker, Recorder and Runner) and hand out Station 1.
- Teams solve a station and bring the answer to you; a correct answer earns the next card.
- Stations 1 to 4 each add one digit to the Spell Book; Station 5, Grimsby’s diary, gives the order to read them.
- A team escapes when its four-digit code is right and gets its certificate. Each team has three hints for the whole game.
What’s in the PDF
- Learner pack, 15 pages: cover, mission and Spell Book, five station cards, hint cards, escape certificate and a supported version of every station.
- Teacher key, 8 pages, kept separate so players never see the answers.
- US Letter and A4 PDFs; low-ink pages that print fine in black and white.
- Optional Canva templates (free account) let you change names, story and hints. Changing any number changes the code, so re-solve the chain if you edit.
In the PDF
- mission and Spell Book sheet
- 5 station cards
- 15 hint cards
- escape certificate
- 5 supported station cards
- 8-page teacher key
