Multiplication & Division CSI Math Mystery Worksheets | Grades 3–5 | The Missing School Bus

Times tables become evidence in a one-case detective investigation — students solve multiplication and division facts to 12 × 12, use each answer to unlock the next clue, and narrow the search until they can name the bus that never made its route. No-prep, printable and self-checking, it works for back-to-school review, math centers, morning work, homework, early finishers, substitute and relief days and test prep across Grades 3–5.

Quick Details

Skill: Multiplication and division facts to 12 × 12 · Grades: 3–5 · Format: One full case, 5 clue pages + complete answer keys (printable PDF, color and black-and-white) · Theme: The Missing School Bus

The Case

Bus after bus pulls into the yard right on time, but one route never arrives at all. Students are still waiting at their stops and nobody can say which bus is missing. Only the math will identify it — its color, its bodywork, its size and its number.

The 5 Clues

Clue One — The Coded Message — Students solve a set of facts and use the key to decode a hidden message, letter by letter.

Clue Two — Yellow or White? — Every answer is already filled in and students tick only the ones that are right; the bigger tally reveals the color of the bus.

Clue Three — Old or New Bodywork? — Students draw a line from each question to its answer, and the line passes through the number and letter that give the clue.

Clue Four — Small or Large? — A chain of questions leads to one final number, and odd or even decides the size of the bus.

Clue Five — The Number Maze — Students color the path matching each answer, follow it to the next problem, and the last box gives the bus number.

Why Teachers Love It

Zero prep — print and teach. Every page is self-checking, so a wrong answer visibly breaks the puzzle and students go back and fix it before they ever reach the key. The detective hook pulls in reluctant and struggling learners who would stall on a fact-fluency worksheet, and five separate clue pages make it easy to spread the pack across a week or hand out one page at a time.

Skills Covered

Recalling multiplication facts through 12 × 12, the matching division facts and fact families, finding a missing factor or quotient to complete an equation, judging whether a given answer is correct and proving it, and following a chain of steps to a final number — plus logical reasoning and deductive elimination as students rule possibilities out clue by clue.

What's Included

A story page that sets up the case, five printable clue worksheets, the suspect line-up, complete answer keys and clear student instructions — every page supplied in full color and in an ink-saving black-and-white version, all in one PDF.

Best Used For

Back-to-school math, math centers and rotations, morning work, homework, early finishers, substitute and relief days, small-group intervention, spiral review and times-tables test prep for Grades 3–5.

More From This Line

Browse every CSI Math Mystery, or take the same facts into a different case with Mission to Mars and The Zombie Cure.