Polar Express | Escape Room | Print + Digital

This Polar Express Escape Game provides instant engagement for students in grades PreK - 1st grade! This could be done whole group, or in small groups as a race with both print and digital versions included. This is a great game to play after watching or reading The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg.

Challenges included:

• Ticket Challenge: Sequencing events from the story (first, next, then, last with pictures)
• Train Challenge: Ordering numbers least to greatest
• Hot Chocolate Challenge: Unscramble sight words (see, the, and)
• North Pole Challenge: Unscramble the sentence (I see the elves.)
• Santa Challenge: Reveal the addition equation
• Bell Challenge: Skip counting by 10's puzzle

Also included:

• Polar Express Read Aloud
• Presenter notes (at the bottom) with teacher directions for each slide. Directions include when to use "present mode" for animated slides, and answer key.
• Blank challenge pages that are fully editable to suit the needs of your students.
• Differentiated challenge pages
• Train Challenge: Click and edit numbers
• Hot Chocolate Challenge: Click and edit sight words
• Bell Challenge: Click and edit skip counting numbers (ie. by 2's, 5's, 10's, etc.)

Check out the video preview of this resource here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13T3j3Smc84eI_rj0Ymt02O3n_4XigjFi/view

As a virtual kindergarten teacher this year, I like to use digital escape games by dividing my students into small teams of 4 - 5 per team during a live zoom call (or Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, etc.) and use breakout rooms. I screen share each challenge, and then each team is in charge of working together to solve each challenge at their own pace. I check in with each group until we can go back and check the answer together.

(Note: You cannot share your screen in individual break out rooms, so you will need to share your screen whole group, then let students enter break out rooms in small groups.)

Depending on the platform you use, you could also share this via Google Classroom, or each individual student to use on their own. In the classroom, each group could use a device, or you could display each challenge on the SmartBoard.

The first team to successfully complete all the challenges wins the game!

Note: The movable pieces will NOT work in present mode. Directions included on each slide.