Escape room ideas for your unit

Escape rooms are becoming more popular. They give girls an opportunity to work together, finding clues and solving problems or puzzles. This is normally done within a time limit.

You don’t have to take your girls to an escape room – you can make your own in your unit’s meeting place, at camp, or a residential.

Theme

Most escape rooms have a theme and base the activities on that. There are so many themes to choose from, including pirate treasure hunt, secret spy mission, witches and wizards. The list is endless.

What to do

1. Pick a theme for the escape room (optional)
2. Decide what you want the girls to find, for example letters to find hidden treasure or various keys that unlock the treasure chest. Or it could be that they collect pieces of a jigsaw, which when put together tell them where the treasure is. The choice is yours.
3. Plan your activities

Ideas for activities 

• Get a long tube with a bottom, like a tube crisps come in. Tie a key to a cork and fill the tube with water. The girls have to get the key out without using their hands.
• Buy some see through coloured plastic and cut out shapes so the girls have to put them together to create a stained glass image. You could write a clue or code on there, so that they have to piece the shapes together to find out what it is.
• Draw around 6 dominos on a piece of paper. Then draw the dots on the paper to represent the 6 dominos, leaving 3 of the numbers blank so they have to place the dominos on the paper and work out what 3 numbers are missing.
• Make a large dot-to-dot on the ground, that when joined together spells out a number, or word.
• Write a clue or code in white wax crayon on a piece of white paper. Girls then have to paint over the paper to reveal what it is.
• Hide a clue in a bowl of flour.
• Write clues on paper but swap out the letters for numbers. Don’t forget to give the girls a list of which letters the numbers correspond to. You could do the same but using emojis, pictures or symbols.
• Hollow out an old book and place a clue inside. You can then hide the book so the girls need to find it.
• You can make up riddles that the girls have to solve. For example, what gets wet while it’s drying? A towel. What has many keys but cannot open any locks? A piano.
• You can set them challenges such as writing their name with their non-dominant hand or tying a knot blindfolded.
• You can also adapt some of the activities from skills builders or unit meeting activities to include as part of the escape room.