These Little Piggies: The Mystery of the missing lunch box!

It is sometimes dificult in our Homeschool group to have an activity that spans the ages (2yrs-17yrs) and every one can enjoy! I was to host "the mystery of the missing lunch box" an activity concept but not planned just yet... So when i looked at the rsvps to see who was all coming i was quite shocked at the number of children(not to mention the age differences) that were going to be joining us...38!!! not including my 5 kids.

So I set to work putting together a mystery scavenger hunt, that more closely resembled the hobbie i love most... LETTERBOXING

It was 10 boxes with a stamp and a clue in each(except the last box to which no clue was needed), showing where the next box was hidden. Each stamp was a clue to the mystery of who stole my lunch box. The last stamp was a magnifying glass.

Some of the journals, and a few stamps.

I also made 40 detective journals, and i think that really helped get the kids focused and ready to go!!!

After a dramatic intro about how my lunch box was missing, we split the whole group into little detective squads, and i gave each group more info about how to find the boxes...showed them their first clue... told them what my lunch consisted of (a juice box, an apple, and a salamy-anchovy-penutbutter sandwich<- the disgusted faces were the best), and sent them on there way at intervals enough to give the group in front time to re-hide the box (or so i thought, some groups were faster than others)

shhhh dont show the other groups... here is the clue

When finaly you found all the boxes, you were to "slove" the mystery and then pick the culpret to stamp in your magnifying glass.... a dog, a crow, or a squirrel... there was no wrong answer. And it was quite interesting to hear the theories of each individual group. How the older groups were more meticulous in solving their crime, and the younger groups had very elaborate stories (one girl did actually put together my original story almost exactly as i had written it, and she was 12) some had just one culpret, some chose to stamp all three(but who can blame them they were such cute stamps!!!