Santa's Locked Workshop (A1+)

Objective & content

A mini escape game on one A4 page, for teams of 2 or 3, in about 10 minutes. An elf has locked Santa's workshop on Christmas Eve. Pupils solve four small puzzles, and each puzzle gives one number of the lock: count the red presents with a star, solve an emoji sum, find the elf with the key from three clues, and cross out four Christmas words in a line of letters to find a hidden number. When the lock is open, they turn the page upside down and read Santa's joke.

Pedagogical guide

Every puzzle is short and gives a result at once, so pupils feel the reward quickly. The English is A1+: colours, numbers, "has", "is not next to", and simple Christmas words (tree, snowman, present, star, bell, snow). Puzzle 3 makes pupils read three clues carefully and keep them all in mind; puzzle 4 is a spelling task in disguise. Teams can do the puzzles in any order. The teacher key is the small line at the bottom right of the page: the code is 6 2 4 9, with the working (the tree is 4, the snowman 5, the present 2; elf 4; NINE).

Suggested procedure

1. (1 min) Hand out one page per team. Read the short story at the top aloud.
2. (7 min) Teams solve the four puzzles and write each number in its box, then the four numbers in the lock.
3. (2 min) A team with a full lock comes to you to check the code. If it is right, they turn the page and read the joke. Read the joke aloud for the class at the end.

Adaptations

[S] Do puzzle 1 together as an example. For puzzle 2, tell pupils to start with the first line (two trees make 8).

[A] Use a timer of 6 minutes. Fast teams write one more clue for puzzle 3 that still points to the right elf.

Materials & prerequisites

One copy per team, in colour or in the low-ink version (the low-ink page names its greys in the text, for example "red (black here)"). Pencils. Pupils need numbers to 10, colours, and "next to". Cut off or fold back the key line at the bottom before you photocopy, if you prefer.