Escape Room for Kids!

One of my husband and my favourite group date activities is doing Escape Rooms with our friends. We are somewhat competitive, have competitive friends and enjoy doing something different that engages our minds and challenges us. We recently had done another adult escape room and our kids were BEGGING us to let them do one.

We'd love to do an escape room with them but all the ones we knew of were suited for adults and wouldn't have worked well for kids. It was when I was looking up ways to create my own escape room that I came across Lock Paper Scissors and found that they create downloadable escape rooms for kids and teens. BINGO!

They quickly hooked me up with 2 options for the age range of my kids and their friends and I decided to go with the game "The Lost Mummy". It was a tough call between that and "The Disappearance of Mr. George" but considering we were about to embark on an Ancient Egypt Study I went for the educational tie in ;) The premise of the room is that you have fallen into an old tomb in Egypt with only a secret way out. Thankfully you are the great great grandchildren of Howard Carter (the man who found King Tut's tomb) and you can use his trusty diary to help you find your way out.

Set Up

Upon purchase you receive the download and an email with links to the game set up. One PDF had all of the pages you needed to print for the game. I used cardstock and my home colour printer to print and they came out great! You could also send to a business printer.

The graphics are interesting, detailed, theme specific and well illustrated.

A unique addition was that the download included quite a few files that you could modify and personalize. This would be a fantastic option for a birthday party or special event.

As the game master you will utilize the following that are provided to you by Lock Paper Scissors:

- An Online Set Up Guide complete with video instructions and walk throughs of the puzzles

- An Answers and Walk Through Sheet to summarize the walk through of each challenge and the answers to the puzzles

- Ideas on how to use this game in a classroom setting (can anyone say favourite teacher award?!) and tips for adding tactile elements.

Once I had everything printed out I watched the videos, read the walk throughs and then read through all the actual escape room printables. In the future for myself I would read through the game printables first so that I would better understand the instructions and what they were referring to.

Considering we were preparing to study Ancient Egypt I was excited to see how historically accurate the references were.

For the location, I chose to set up the room in the basement of our 100 year old house (it's as close to a tomb as we can get ;)). I had a blast searching my home for anything that could pass for Egyptian looking and could belong in a tomb. I added mood lighting and hid some of the game elements.

The diaries are key to the whole escape room so the first thing I did was put them in a box with a lock and hid the key. I hid several other puzzles from the first challenge (this escape room has 3 major challenges), I tied and knotted the scissors so they'd have to find a way to use them, I hid the glue sticks they needed in a big jar of buttons and I created a Google Form that they'd have to punch in the codes they found to see if they were successful.

Hosting the Escape Room

This game is recommend for 10-12 year olds and a group of 4-6 players. I decided to keep it to 4 players as the puzzles are intricate and I thought they'd get to be involved more if there were less players. My group's ages ranged from 8 - 12.

Included in the set up guide is a intro video for the kids to watch so we watched that and then descended into the tomb. I also love that Lock Paper Scissor includes a Spotify playlist to play during the game and a 60 minute timer video (YouTube) as well. These little pieces do a lot to enhance the atmosphere.

How'd They Do?

The kids loved the atmosphere and the theme. It was so fun to hear their excited voices as they found clues, keys and puzzles.

The puzzles in the each of the challenge are well thought out and somewhat complex. I like that it was a challenge for them. Necessary information was provided but things aren't super obvious which is consistent with any escape room I've ever attended.

We did need to provide hints at each stage of the game but once they had a hint and were steered back in the right direction they were able to figure it out and keep going to complete each challenge.

All in all the kids took about 1 hour and 20 minutes to make it through. As parents we noted that any activity that keeps the kids interested, engaged and not frustrated for an hour and 20 minutes is a big win!

This was also all of their first escape room so we were quite happy with how they processed through the challenges and could see their thinking expand with each challenge. I think this experience will help them in their next escape room as well!

Our younger participants requested that there be "more things to look for" next time. Noted.

I was so glad to see the kids enjoy themselves and to have an experience that they'd never had before. We live in Saskatchewan where the winters are long and cold and it can be a stretch to keep finding activities for the kids to do indoors. These downloadable Escape Rooms are the perfect option! They are definitely going in my options of awesome birthday parties (because both of my children have birthdays in February when it's minus a million outside).

If you're looking for a unique kids activity for a night in or a special event I definitely recommend checking out Lock Paper Scissors. Each escape room is priced affordably at $29 USD and you can even purchase combination packages for further discounts. For just $69 you can get all 5 of the games on their site.

As well - come check out my instagram @monique.willms and @lockpaperscissors for a Giveaway! We're giving away an escape room download to 3 lucky winners!