The first week of summer: an Escape Room in search of the key to education

PlusKids Summer School 2025 has begun, and the first week took the children into a storybook Escape Room: "Find the key to education".

They stepped into a world of mysteries, enchanted clocks and fantastical characters, where every door opened only if you solved something first. The first day began with the clock: together we worked out how it runs, in the style of the White Rabbit. Telling the time is one of those skills that settles far better when a child watches the mechanism move than when they follow a drawing on a worksheet — the link between the minute hand and the hour suddenly becomes logic rather than a rule to memorise.

Craft workshops followed, with the children making objects inspired by the story. Working with their hands played a double role here: it practises fine motor skills and patience, but it also gives a concrete reason to see something through — the object you have made then goes into the game.

The part that gripped them most was the hunt for clues. In an escape room a child quickly discovers that a wrong guess is not a disgrace but an option ruled out; that it pays to read the wording twice; and that someone in the team always spots the detail you skipped. This is where the difference between working next to someone and working with someone showed: one observes, one writes things down, one tries, and the key only turns up once they start listening to each other.

In the end, the key to education turned out to be exactly what we suspected: curiosity, logic and team spirit. On Friday we celebrated every small success, because a summer week ends with a party, not with an assessment.

Education does not take the summer off — it simply changes shape.

About the PlusKids Summer School: https://pluskids.ro/en/summer-school