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A three-row number pyramid with 30 on top, beside the cover of the Ice Cream Truck Meltdown listing, showing a red panda and an ice cream truck.

Field Notes

Ice Cream Truck Meltdown: A Math Escape Room for Grades 3 and 4

2 min read
  • Printable games
  • Classroom
  • Grades 3-4

It is the hottest day of the summer at Sunhat Beach, and the freezer in Kiwi the red panda's ice cream truck has stopped. Ice Cream Truck Meltdown is a printable math escape room for Grades 3 and 4, for a classroom of 4 to 6 teams or for 1 to 6 children at home.

Fifteen seconds from the listing: the kit as it is built and played.

How the lesson runs

  • Story and warm-up. Crews learn the scoop rule: every scoop is the two scoops under it added together.
  • Six stations in any order, about 4 to 8 minutes each, and every crew starts at a different one.
  • Each station gives one number. The six numbers stack like scoops, then melt into four cups, and the cups are the freezer code.
  • A wrong number will not stack, so crews find and fix their own slips.
The 'How the escape room works' picture from the listing: four boxes, story and warm-up, six stations, the Freezer Lock and freezer on, with sample pages.
Six stations, one number each, one freezer code, from the listing.
The 'Two levels, one answer key' picture from the listing: Single Scoop cards for Grade 3 and Double Scoop cards for Grade 4.
Two levels give the same number at every station.

Two levels, one answer key

Single Scoop cards are for Grade 3 (times tables to 10 × 10, numbers to 1,000, eighths, times to 2 h 30 min). Double Scoop cards are for Grade 4 (dividing numbers up to 150, numbers to 10,000, mixed numbers, longer times and routes). Both levels of a station give the same number, so mixed classes and split grades play side by side and you check everyone with one key.

A skills page lists the US Common Core codes for Grade 3 and Grade 4 as a planning guide; it is not endorsed by the standards' authors.

Games mentioned

Ice Cream Truck Meltdown, first picture of its store page

Ice Cream Truck Meltdown

A printable math escape room for Grades 3 and 4: six stations, two levels with one answer key, and a final Freezer Lock.

See details

Digital download: nothing is shipped.

More field notes