Mystery Party Game??

[Quad Shot Academy]

My son wants a Mystery Party game for his 8th birthday. I thought it would be easy enough to find something for kids like the Murder Mysteries that they make for adults, but now that I look, I can only find ones made for girls through the American Girl collection. Any ideas? TIA

[Julie in Austin]

http://www.nightofmystery.com/

I don't know if this is what you are looking for? We are planning to do one of these next month, but haven't actually done it yet, so can't completely recommend it.

[Quad Shot Academy]

Thanks for the link. I am looking for something that is geared toward younger kids, like maybe a pet-napping or something stolen, like a bike. The one you plan to do sure does look fun! Maybe I will have to do one with our adult friends . . .:001_smile:

[Jean in Newcastle]

We had a mystery party for my ds's 8th birthday. This is what I did: I sent out coded invitations (a simple number = a letter code but I didn't start A = 1, I started later in the alphabet). In the same alphabet I put the solution sheet with the letters and numbers matched up. BTW, some moms still couldn't figure it out and had to call me for the solution. . . All the families who gave it to the kid to solve, had not problem!

Ice breaker - thing for kids to do while kids trickle in: I printed out a copy of semiphore (those are the flags that sailors use to signal other ships) codes for letters (I have no idea where I found this - I think I asked the librarian for help on this). I gave the kids the semiphore alphabet and a message made from semiphore letters.

Main event: I made up a little mystery scavenger hunt game. I had a lot of kids (every single kid I invited came!) so I divided them into 3 teams. I gave each team a clue. Clue #1 was in Braille. (I gave them a sheet with the Braille alphabet on it). The first clue sent them to a location in our yard (for example: "under the bird feeder") The kids had to solve the clue (each team had a different location that they were sent to). They then raced to the location where they found 1 "evidence" card: ( ie. a picture of a mask). They also found a new clue.

Clue #2 was in semiphore (I gave them another sheet with the semiphore alphabet on it). It said something like ("in the hedge"). Again they found a evidence card - "a picture of gloves". And another clue.

Clue #3 was a riddle ("You use me to shake dirt through. Dirt goes through but rocks stay on top") It led them to a sieve in the sandbox. New evidence card - "a picture of a safe". New clue.

Clue #4 had letters that you had to read in a zig-zag pattern.

LTOAIBTREIS
SORKWNEHRE

If you read the L from the 1st line, then zig to the O in the 2nd line, then zag to the O in the 1st line, zip to the K in the second line etc. you get "Look in the strawberries". New evidence card = "picture of an empty safe deposit box" New clue.

Clue #5 had words written vertically.

LTT
OHR
OEE
KCE
IL
NI
M
B
I
N
G

"Look in the climbing tree"

New evidence card = picture of jewels.

Now that the team has all the evidence cards they have to figure out what the crime was that they were solving. Obviously this team's crime was a bank robbery. (Team B had a car theft. Team C had a dognapping.)

I have no idea what we ate: it's a mystery to me!

Goodie bags were paper bags that I put the children's names on in the zig-zag code (described above for clue #4). I don't remember what I put in them though!

Hope this gives you some ideas. It took a lot of work for me but I really had a blast putting it together. And the kids had a blast!

[Quad Shot Academy]

Jean, you are so creative! My husband and I decided last night that we better just try and come up with something on our own. Your ideas are a great start! Thanks!

[6packofun]

this site: http://www.host-party.com/viewmysteries.asp

The one we did was about some animals stolen from a zoo...I can't remember the name! You can see that they have a lot to choose from, including some historical type ones, too. There are email invites you can send and all the instructions are there for you to download and print with helpful hints. There IS some prep time, obviously, and that varies from mystery to mystery.

They have options for making the mysteries non-murder mysteries, too, if you don't want that but like one of the stories for teens rather than children.

You'll need to look and see how involved the children must be--they are all set up a bit differently and some of them require kids to sort of "act the part." (More of the teen mysteries are that way.) Few or no memorized lines are required, though, and for the one we used everyone was given a summary of their character in their invitation and it was casually scripted so that you could wing it if you had to.

Dd had a blast! She had 9 friends and it took me a week to pull it all together. We held it at our church so that they'd have plenty of room to run around! LOL

[FlockOfSillies]

We did a mystery party for dd8 last year. It was a treasure hunt to her gift -- a cardboard treasure chest full of Hardy Boys books. We took pictures of the kids and made detective ID badges as party favors, along with a goody bag full of sunglasses, flashlights and whatnot from the party store or the dollar store.

[HomeOnTheRanch]

I would definitely give magnifying glasses for the goody bags. Sounds like fun!

[Jean in Newcastle]

made detective ID badges as party favors

Yes! That's one of the details I forgot for our party! I know that our local P.D. hands out I.D. badge stickers at the summer town party etc. So I called the P.D. office and asked if they had any extra for our party. They had me drop by and gave me a whole stack! I laminated them and put a safety pin on for a more permanent badge for the kids to keep.