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.
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.


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
A printable math escape room for Grades 3 and 4: six stations, two levels with one answer key, and a final Freezer Lock.
See detailsDigital download: nothing is shipped.
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