May Book & Cookie Club: Fake Mustache

Book and Cookie Club is a monthly book discussion that I facilitate.  It is geared toward students in 3rd - 5th grade and an adult caregiver.  Each month I select a book, we read it, and then we get together to nosh on some delicious cookies while we have Maximum Fun!  

Our book for this month was Fake Mustache by Tom Angleberger.   

My Devious Plan

I have been desperate to create an escape room and use it in one of my programs.  I think escape rooms are incredibly fun and I love how they encourage everyone to work together.  I thought that Fake Mustache would be the perfect book to use as inspiration for my very first escape room.

Escape Room Noob

Research

I highly recommend doing as much research as you can before you start the process of creating an escape room from scratch.  

Here are the websites & blogs that I referenced when I was creating the escape room:
The Logic Escapes Me
Now Escape
Lock Paper Scissors
​Weekend Notes
Instructables
​Fundraising Mums

Recommendations

These are the four major things that I wish I would have done a little bit better when I was planning and executing this escape room.  

• Time: give yourself time to plan your escape room
• Think: consider how you will set-up the room & where the clues will go
• Test: have a group of people test out your escape room so that you can work out the little kinks
• Try: make sure you know how to open the locks (I struggs to open and close that durn rope lock.  Yikes!)

Supplies

• Computer*
• Projector*
• BlueTooth speaker*
• Boggle*
• Lewo Tumbling Tower*
• Interoffice envelope*
• 10 cardstock mustaches (laminated w/ paper clips attached)*
• 2 hands (laminated with magnets on the back & yarn attached)*
• Does It Fart?  by Nick Caruso & Dana Rabaiotti*
• Slime (I made it from scratch)*
• Nose tissue box holder* 
• Orange crepe streamers
• Extendable cord lock
• Number/letter lock
• Mario tin with ? mark*
  • Candy (Jolly Ranchers & Life Savers)
  • Sticky hands
• Whoopee cushion
• Pictures of book characters with mustaches*

Some of the items for the escape room were things that I already owned.  I'm going to be 100% honest with you, I am in grad school, I work part time, and I'm married to a teacher.  We're not swimming in cash so I definitely designed the clues around things that I had lying around my house.  Anything marked with a "*" is something that I either own or was provided by my library. 

The whoopee cushion was my timekeeper  I let 'er rip to let everyone know that they had 15 and 10 minutes left.

Room Set-Up

Book and Cookie Club is hosted in our children's program room.  We have a lot of cabinets where we store our programming supplies.  I decided to utilize two of the cabinets for the escape room.  I also thought it was important to mark off the things that were NOT part of the escape room.  I used orange crepe streamers to block off the areas that weren't part of the escape room to provide a visual reminder in case participants fogot which areas were not part of the game.

​There was also the added challenge of everyone being in the room before we began the escape room.  I covered up the clues for the escape room with blue table cloths and made sure I had a fun icebreaker activity (mazes) for everyone to do at their seats as we waited for everyone to arrive.

The Story & The 1st Clue

Every escape room has to have a story!  I usediFakeText Message and Screen Cast O'Matic to create a text conversation between myself and Fako Mustacho (the evil villain).  The B&C Crew watched the video and began the search for their candy!

The hint is located in the the text messages of the video.

• Find a lock with numbers
• Combination is 4-2-2.

Clue #2: URGENT!

Once participants unlocked the cabinet, there was an interoffice envelope with a yellow note marked “URGENT!!!”

There are hints hidden inside of the memo that led the team to the next major clue: word, blue, hairy, and evil (the boggle game)
​
There is also a secret clue on the logo of the memo: HNBC (that came in handy later)

Clue #3: EVIL HAIR!

I hid a yellow piece of paper that was slightly poking out from under Boggle.

The yellow piece of paper had a poem that led The Crew to the next clue.

"Finding candy is your wish, use your hands to go and fish.  To locate the candy stash - you must catch a mustache!”

The hints in the poem are the words "hands" and "mustache".

Clue #4 -- Catch That 'Stache

Participants used the magnetic hands to pick up all of the mustaches.  Each mustache had a number written on the back.  

The numbers represented a letter.  One of the magnetic hands had a number/letter key that participants used to break the code.

This is the code:
U = 1
12  18 7  26 1 18  11 20 9 11
Answer to the code is: Flatulence

Clue #5-- Does it Fart?

I had a stack of books on a table with the spines facing out.  Participants had to find the book Does It Fart? to locate the next clue.

I placed a bookmark on the horse page of Does It Fart that would lead participants to the next clue.

Clue #6 -- The Tower

I taped a picture of a nose on four of the Lewo blocks.  I hid them inside of the tower.  The kids decided the best strategy was to knock down the tower to find the next clue!

Clue #7 -- It's SNOT funny

I made slime and placed it inside of this amazing tissue box cover that belongs to MLaw (my awesome husband).  I hid the next clue inside of the slime/snot.  The kids had to stick their hand in the box and pull the clue out of the slime.  Squealing noises were made (MWA-HA-HA!)

The clue inside of the slime/snot was a laminated piece of paper that said "I am as pretty as a picture."

Clue #8 -- Picture Perfect

There's nothing funnier than putting mustaches on book characters.  I'm not going to lie, putting mustaches on The Berenstain Bears had me giggling uncontrollably.

The characters pictured here are: Harry Potter, Nancy Drew, Berenstain Bears, and Clifford (HNBC).

The Crew really thought long and hard on this one.  They came up with some ideas that I hadn't thought of (like counting the number of mustaches on the characters).  Ultimately, they figured out that the first letter of each character's name was the first part of the lock combination and then they realized that there were four pictures on the wall, which was the last part of the lock combination.

​So, the lock combination was HNBC4.

THEY DID IT!

The Crew solved the escape room in 22 minutes.  Each of the kids recieved a cello treat bag for their candy stash and sticky hand.  I considered getting mini whoopee cushions, but I decided the sticky hands and sugared up children would be enough of a punishment to the parents in attendance (Sorry! #notsorry #theyhadfun)

Mustache Photo Booth

I created a photo booth and printed off some mustache photo booth props.  The kids and parents had a blast taking photos! 

I took some photos of my own after Book and Cookie Club was over to celebrate the success of my first escape room!