Mystery party games

Mystery party games for little kids

Mystery party games are great fun for small children!

Playing detective, going on a scavenger hunt, working out clues from top secret documents or just simple guessing games will keep your little guests busy and happy.

These mystery party activities are easy to organize.

All it takes is a little preparation and you're ready to go!

Mystery party games

Mystery party icebreaker games
As your guests arrive, sit them down to a set of problem solving activities.

Provide mazes, spot-the-differences, and word searches. Or why not create a secret agent ID card?

Prepare printed templates or cut-outs of faces, and the kids can use stickers to add hair, eye color, lips and so on - and then they can think up a code name for their newly created secret agent!

Mystery party scavenger hunt
You can play this game indoors or out. Prepare a list of things for the kiddies to find. You can either write words, or photocopy a set of small pictures for younger kids.

The children look at their list and set off to find the items. When they find each one, they can cross them off the list.

An inside scavenger hunt could include

• a teddy bear (suitably dressed!)
• a magnifying glass
• a pair of sunglasses
• a a book with "Top Secret" on the cover
• a fingerprint - photocopy a large image of a fingerprint and tape it to the inside of a door
• a camera
• a tape recorder
• a pair of binoculars

You could hide these items around the house in fairly obvious places, depending on the age of the children.

Moving outside, you could use the same items. Or you could get them to collect a set of items such as

• a leaf
• a twig
• an ant
• a pebble...

...as well as any other garden objects you have available, presuming you have enough of them for each child to collect.

What is it?
Take photographs of some mystery items. Pin enlarged pictures up around the room - and get the kids to guess what they are!

You could consider

• the end of a mop
• a close-up of a computer keyboard
• an upside down chair
• an angle shot of an empty CD box
• the bottom of a glass or cup
• part of a favorite toy

Just look around your house and you should get some great ideas!

More guessing games
Kids love to guess! Spice up your mystery party games with a few fun guessing mysteries such as:

• how many candies in the jar?

• who's the baby? - get your guests to bring baby pictures of themselves

• what's the present? - wrap a ball, a tennis racquet, a bottle, a book, a dvd in plain paper so that the shape is pretty obvious, but add a couple of more mysterious items such as a teddy bear or toothbrush

• try playing, or teaching to play, scissors, paper, stone - also known as rock, paper, scissors!

Secret agent relay race
Prepare two sets of disguises for your two teams - false glasses, moustache, teeth or nose - or even a wig! Add a raincoat, gloves and hat.

Once you start the game, each child has to dress up, run around your relay race area - or you could set up a mini obstacle course - return to their team, and take off the disguise. Then it's the next child's turn to dress up and go!

If you prefer not to play this in teams, just let each kid take a turn one after the other.

Time how long it takes all of them together to complete the course. Then let them play it again, seeing if they can beat their first time.