Christmas Maths Escape Room KS2 Year 5 & 6, Whole-Class Printable with Answers, 60 Minute End of Term Activity

A ready-to-run Christmas maths escape room for Year 5 and Year 6 teachers. It is built for a whole class of up to 30 pupils working in up to 8 teams of 3 or 4, and takes about 60 minutes: a 5-minute story introduction, 45 minutes of puzzling and 10 minutes for the vault finale and celebration. The story is original. A muddled snow-sprite has locked the village's Midwinter Star in the Snow Vault, and teams solve six maths puzzles to find the six-digit code. Every station comes in three difficulty tiers (Holly, Bauble and Star), so mixed-attainment classes can all play the same game. The puzzles are mapped to the England KS2 National Curriculum for Years 5 and 6. A teacher with a printer and 15 minutes of prep can run it.

What's included:

• 21 printable pages, in A4 and US Letter versions (PDF, print-ready, not editable)
• Teacher guide with a prep checklist, print quantities, timings and tier-assignment advice
• Two-page word-for-word teacher script: story introduction, rules, timed announcements, vault check and finale
• Curriculum map showing the Year 5 and Year 6 strands covered by each of the six stations
• 6 puzzle stations, each with 3 tiers (18 puzzles in total): place value and number, factors, multiples, primes, squares and cubes, fractions, decimals and percentages, measures, geometry, and statistics, ratio and mean
• Station signs and Elf Desk and Snow Vault signs
• Hint ladder cards for every station: two general hints plus a tier-specific third hint
• Team recording sheet with answer boxes, a hint tally and vault code boxes
• Vault finale cards to hand out when a team cracks the code
• Full answer key: a one-page code table plus worked solutions for all 18 puzzles
• Team certificates and individual certificates

How to use:
1. Download the file in a desktop or laptop browser, then open the A4 or US Letter PDF. Print at 100% / actual size, not 'fit to page'. Black and white printing works fine.
2. Print the station pages (2 copies of each), the team sheets (1 per team), the signs, and the Elf Desk hint cards. The guide lists exact quantities.
3. Put the stations around the room and sit at the Elf Desk with the hint cards and answer key.
4. Give each team a tier (Holly, Bauble or Star), read the story from the script, and let the teams loose.
5. Check each vault code against the key, hand out the vault cards and celebrate with the certificates.

Please note: this is a digital printable pack. Pupils need pencils and scrap paper, and no calculators are needed. Maths uses UK spelling and terms. This resource is for use in your own classroom(s) and may not be shared or resold.

Designed with the help of AI tools and reviewed for quality. Digital download: no physical item will be shipped.