Throwing a Kid’s Murder Mystery Party

By Suzy Fielders

My daughter was turning 11 this year. I wanted to do something a little different. She loves to cook and even has her own food blog.  We first thought it’d be fun to do a dinner party. Then I thought that seemed a little boring for kids. We needed something for them to actually do. I’ve seen a lot of places host murder mystery dinners and thought why not try a kid’s murder mystery dinner party?

It went pretty well for a first-time attempt, but as with any event, there’s always a learning curve! I wanted to share my experience and tips in this blog. I hope this helps any parents who might want to host one for their kids! I was told by parents, my daughter, and their dance teacher, that most of the girls were still raving that Monday about the party!

Invitations

True to today’s digital age, I just set up a Facebook event that served as the invitation and notifications of her party. This is actually how I’ve hosted and notified about my daughter’s birthday parties for the past couple of years. I highly recommend it as it saves paper/envelopes. I also found that people were much more responsive in RSVP matters.  Especially when you post something specific on those Facebook events than the standard old invitation. Once live, everyone seemed very excited about the idea, so it seemed it was off to a good start!

Kid’s Murder Mystery Party Gifts

My first task was figuring out the party gifts. I know I end up trashing most of the little things that my daughter gets from those birthday party gift bags. How many rubber stamps, plastic rings, etc. does a kid need? Sure every mom can relate to that as clutter seems to be a staple of parenthood. My first thought was I wanted to give the kids something they’d actually use but enjoy after the party. But, I also really wanted to tie into the murder mystery theme.

We wound up finding some notebooks (see image) at Family Dollar. They were fun prints and something any kid could use again. Seriously, what young girl doesn’t love having a journal or diary?? I figured they could use it to write notes if they wanted while trying to solve the mystery or just use it later. My daughter also decided it’d be fun to personalize each one. She got sticker letters and put each girl’s name on the inside cover with a personal message. We also bought pens and pencils to give away with the notebooks. They could use them for the game, at school, or wherever else after. The last items we purchased were mini-magnifying glasses. That seemed like a fun tie into the party theme. These unfortunately didn’t arrive until after the party. EBay isn’t always reliable apparently!

Kid’s Murder Mystery Party Prizes

Since we were playing a game I also wanted to have prizes for those who won. Sticking to the theme, I got the game Clue as a prize. I also really wanted to get the Nancy Drew movie but couldn’t find it anywhere so just got a spy/mystery/adventure-type movie instead! I highly recommend having more than one prize though as more than one child might win this type of game!

Murder Mystery Party Kits

Now that the party favors and prizes were set, I had the task of determining how to actually host a murder mystery party for kids! Of course the first thing I did was search Pinterest. Which I really have no idea why I ever do that…

1. Seriously how does any busy mom really pull off those perfect things always posted on there?

2. Nothing is ever straightforward on there. It’s always bits and pieces, so you end up not finding all you need.

3. Going off point 2 it was easy to see it’d be ridiculously time-consuming to come up with my own murder mystery and that I was just going to have to buy a kit of some sort.

Moving on from Pinterest I decided to just stick to good old fashion research on Google. I searched a ton of terms associated with kid’s murder mystery games. I found many links on it but found a lot were just curated content links and not very helpful. After going through tons of those, I finally tracked down a few sites that had actual murder mystery kits for kids. Also, I knew kids at this party would be ages 9-11 so wanted to be sure it was age-appropriate.

After much debate here is the one I ended up going with: www.kids-mysteries.com/mystery_manor.htm – Scroll down and click the left circle labeled “kid’s mysteries”

Here are a few runner ups though to see some other options!

mymysteryparty.com/kids-mystery-parties/

www.freeformgames.com/index.php

www.shotinthedarkmysteries.com/kids-teens/

The one I got was a downloadable kit. It included everything from directions, roles, answers, etc. Due to wanting to keep it simple I just went with one that had a story and script for each character, and not one that required hiding & finding clues.

It was a pretty cool kit, but I found even though they said it could be for girls this age, it was above their heads. Luckily, they still had lots of fun and a couple of girls got a lucky guess and figured out ‘who did it’.

Tips

A few tips I found… the ‘grown-ups’ were a bit louder than the kids when trying to share the background story and get the kids to discuss the clues – so I ended up having to get the kids on the back porch so they could focus on the game!

I would recommend for a group under 13 to maybe try one of the lower level ones to make it easier for them.

It ended up being best just gathering them all up and having them say their character roles/answers and guiding them in taking turns. I originally broke them into two groups as the directions suggested but then some girls were missing out in trying to figure out clues so again just best to have them all together and take directed turns.

Lastly, speaking of the above on not always going off the directions … they gave suggestions on how to let the game flow. Of this particular game, only 8 people were suspects and the others were investigators – it led to a lot of confusion as then the girls thought they couldn’t guess who it was, but all were actually given the opportunity to guess!

If you do this as a dinner party like we did, then I suggest you let the kids eat first. It does take a while to get through the game (a minimum of an hour and a half) so you don’t want a lot of hungry kids!

Don’t feel like you have to have everything stick to the murder mystery theme either. While you can – as I saw some have cakes with ‘bloody’ butcher knives – my daughter decided she wanted something a little more light and fun for the cake. Therefore, she got a unicorn cake!

Overall I think the kid’s had a great time – and we decided this idea is one to maybe try again with a different mystery!

If You Liked This Kid’s Murder Mystery Party Blog Post You Might Also Like These: 

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