The Founder's Lost Fortune: A Free Math Mystery for Pre-6th Grade Review

There's a rusted box in an old blacksmith's forge that no one in Willow Creek has ever managed to open. There's a portrait in Town Hall with eyes that seem to follow you across the room. There's a stranger in a long coat who keeps showing up exactly when you don't want him to. And there are thirty math problems standing between two kids and whatever their town's founder buried before he disappeared.

That's the setup for The Founder's Lost Fortune, a free printable built for exactly the kind of kid who groans at a worksheet but will happily do thirty math problems if a treasure hunt is on the other side of them. This one's made for rising 6th graders specifically, a way to knock the dust off the skills they already have before the school year actually starts, not to teach anything new.

Jamie and Alex work their way through five chapters of an original mystery story. Each chapter hides six real math problems along the way, thirty in total, covering the skills a rising 6th grader should already have solid: dividing whole numbers, fractions of a quantity, simplifying fractions, order of operations, area of a rectangle, decimals, ratio and scale, mean, basic exponents, and unit conversion. Every answer converts into a letter using a real shift cipher (we even walk kids through exactly how Julius Caesar used this same trick over two thousand years ago), and by the end, all thirty letters spell out where the fortune is hidden.

A full answer key is included at the back. When you print the packet, keep the last 2 pages till your student has completed the 5 chapters.

It's free, it's downloadable, and it's ready for morning math time, a rainy afternoon, or a co-op day when you want something a little different on the table.

One more thing. The note the kids dig up at the end makes it pretty clear this isn't actually finished. Consider this Episode One.

Grab your free copy here.