Murder Mystery Party for 7-11 year olds. My son loves to read Sherlock Holmes books and watch mystery
movies, so there was no doubt to what the theme for his 10th birthday would be. We decided to make the party one giant game, kind of like Clue. All the children would be given "personalities" and clues to who the murder was, based on the murderers personality. This party takes a lot of planning, but it is worth it in the end. First, send out the invitations to about 8-10 friends who get along well with each other. To save money, I helped my son design the invitations on the computer. We used clip art and digital pictures to make the invitations decorated according to the theme. We sent these out 2 weeks in advance to make sure everyone who was invited could come. Once we found out who was able to make it, we began the preparation. We wrote up personalities for each child. To make this, just write down things like name, job, mood, special talent, etc on an index card. On the same card, you also have to write whether the guest is the murderer or not. When the children arrive, they will receive their personality card and will have to act like that person for the rest of the party. This will allow the rest of the guests to try and figure out who the murderer is. The next step of preparation is to choose the rest of the games that the guests will be participating in. One of the games we used at our party was the treasure hunt. Everyone was put into groups. Each group got a pad of paper, a pen, and a starting clue. Each clue would have a question that they had to answer correctly on their pad of paper. Each clue would also have a clue to where the next one was hidden. At the end, two teams would win a prize. One prize would be for whoever got to the treasure first, and one for the team with the most correct answers. The next game we played was a giant jigsaw puzzle. I got this from the local toy store for about 10 dollars. The last game we played was detective and murderer. On index cards, I wrote either M or D (M for murderer, D for detective; there was only one M). I handed out the cards to children. If they got a D, they would guess who the murderer was. If they were M, they had to wink at a person. If you got winked at, you had to turn around. The "dead" people couldn't guess who the murderer was. Whoever guessed correctly won. Of course, a party isn't a party without food. Since this party overlapped with lunch, I served hamburgers and hotdogs and veggies with dip. For the cake, I baked a square chocolate cake and decorated it to look like a magnifying glass. Lunch took them about 30 minutes. To quiet the kids down before they went home, I played a Sherlock Holmes video. Finally, about 10 minutes before the party ended, from using his clues, a boy figured out who the murderer was. He won a sherlock Holmes video. For the goodie bags, my son decorated brown paper lunch bags with computer pictures of magnifying glasses, top secret signs, and finger prints. I filled the bags with lemon juice for writing secret letters, mini magnifying glasses, and candy. This party brought smiles to all the guests and to the birthday boy. It was 2 years ago and everyone is still talking about it!
