It’s official…Katie’s virtual Sherlock Holmes escape room is a smash hit! We’ve had thousands of visitors from all over the United States, including Alaska, Montana, Maine, Louisiana, Kansas, West Virginia, Kansas, Texas, South Dakota, Oregon, and Wisconsin. We’ve also had visitors from all over the globe…India, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Nigeria, Ireland, Spain, Israel, Greece, and France!
In addition to some terrific fan mail, we’ve also received questions about how Katie put the escape room interface together. Today, we present a “how to” video, narrated by Katie, so you can craft your very own virtual escape room (and if you do, send us a link)!
READY TO WATCH THE VIDEO? YOU’LL FIND IT HERE!
A couple additional tips from Katie:
- Make sure the images and files you use are either original, or free use. Katie primarily used images from Wikicommons. Her image credits can be found on the last slide of the escape room.
- Pilot test your escape room! Katie’s son, nieces, and nephews were her very enthusiastic test team (thank you guys!). And Katie did adjust a few things based on their feedback.
- Troubleshoot your escape room in different browsers, and make sure to note (especially in the instructions for your participants) that the Google sites interface is difficult to use with touch screen devices.
Theoretically speaking, what WOULD happen if a llama created a black hole with his overzealous cake consumption? Would the world survive?
First, wrap 4 toilet paper tubes with constructions paper…2 with brown paper fringes, 2 with plain white. Next, cut the bottom off a small box (like a square tissue box). Then set the box on top of the legs (we hot glued the legs in place, too). The rest of the box gets decorated with brown construction paper fringes and white construction paper “pants.”
Now wrap the neck with brown construction paper fringes, pinch the bottom of the neck, and slide it into the front of the box (if you’re using a tissue box, you’ll need to cut a slit in the box). Use spare cardboard to make llama ears and a tail, add some eyes, and you’re done!
We decided to take the project one step further by introducing a black hole activity (and yup, crafting a black hole was a first in my long history of story times!). First, we had kids make pies and cakes using a paper cup, tin foil, and a paper baking cup.
The pie tin is the top of the paper cup (i.e. the open mouth part of the cup) wrapped in tin foil. The pie is the bottom of a paper baking cup.
I sat inside, and kids had to enter the black hole, look at the 2 cakes and 2 pies “floating” inside it, and select the one they had created!