Author: keepinthesunlightblog@gmail.com

Mysteries for Kids

Posted on by keepinthesunlightblog@gmail.com

As I mentioned in this post, our daughter has been all about mysteries lately.  As a kid I used to love reading mystery books.  I read Agatha Christie novels when I was probably far younger than I’d want my kids to do so.  I enjoyed any and all mysteries.  But in recent years, I just can’t do the murder mysteries.  At all.  Perhaps it’s being older and having heard real-life tragic stories.  I just can’t bear to read or watch a story about anything scary or gruesome.  But that doesn’t mean I have to write off mysteries completely.  I love that my daughter has helped me re-connect with this genre.  I’ve been searching for detective activities and kid-friendly mysteries, and here’s my collection so far:

–This is a great collection of  Observation Ideas.  I thought our 8-year old would be really into the activity of observing a scene and noting the changes, but it was actually our 3-year old who took this activity and ran with it.


–I am pretty particular about what our kids are allowed to watch, but The Inbestigators on Netflix has my Stamp of Approval.  Four cute/sweet kids solving mysteries around their town and school (Well, mostly just one of them solving) and culprits who show remorse.  Interesting cases and the whole family can enjoy.


—The Mysterious Benedict Society  by Trenton Lee Stewart
Our daughter first read this two summers ago, and we’ve re-read this together too many times to count.  It’s been a favorite of mine for many years, so I was super excited to see how much she loves it.  (There are at least four other books in the series!)


—Mysteries According to Humphrey by Betty Birney
(Oddly, of all the other mystery references we’ve seen, this was the one that triggered our daughter’s fascination with mysteries.  Gotta love Humphrey.)  I haven’t read this one, but the kids seem to love it.


—Stories to Solve – Folktales from Around the World
These are some of my FAVORITE kinds of puzzles/mysteries/brainteasers.  They’re short and clever and timeless.  (I do censor some of these or tweak them, depending on the story.). We also checked out Still More Stories to Solve from our library, so I’m assuming there are at least three of these.


–The Mystery of King Karfu by Doug Cushman
Detective Seymour Sleuth and his assistant, Muggs, must make their way to Egypt to solve the case of the missing Stone Chicken!
This light-hearted mystery has lots of interesting and funny details in the illustrations and story.  I love that it involves the reader in looking at clues and decoding puzzles to help crack the case.  (Check your library or local used bookstore first, but here’s a YouTube reading someone did)


—Sophie Mouse:The Great Big Paw Print by Poppy Green
Our kids love the Sophie Mouse books, and I do too!  In this one, Sophie and her friends work together to find out the cause of some curious mysteries around Pine Needle Grove.

(CHECK BACK–STILL ADDING FROM OUR CURRENT STACK OF MYSTERY BOOKS)

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Easter Bread

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I made this bread decades ago, back when I found it in my Family Fun magazine as a teenager. (Yes, I was that kind of teen.)   Anyway, I came across a photo of it recently and had to make it this year.  What a fun bread!  First of all, you get to braid it, so my daughter was very excited by this part.  It’s also a sweet bread.  AND it has eggs buried/tucked into it.  How awesome is that!  To top it off, we added our hippie, natural sprinkles on top.  Very yummy treat and a great tradition for Easter day.

I used the old recipe from the 1990s Family Fun magazine, but there are many, many similar ones online.

April Fools

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I used to seriously dread April Fools’ Day, especially when I was a teacher.  I really don’t like when people just tell fibs on this day and call it an April Fools’ joke. I also really dislike pranks that are mean or a huge mess or environmentally-wasteful.  I do, however, appreciate punny/silly jokes like these:

–Google lets you put a 3D animal into a scene on your phone or for pictures.  The kids thoughts these were great fun last year.

–I cut up a bunch of “E”s from brown paper and told the kids I was bringing out a tray of “Brown E”s.  (Be sure to have the real thing after the joke. =)

–This year, the kids loved giving their Dada a mysterious packet labeled “bagel seeds” that instructed him to leave them in a tray by a window sill.  “No watering or soil necessary!” they wrote.  “Bagels will grow in 2 hours!”  The seeds were Cascadian Os cereal, and when Dada left the room, we quickly switched these out with hidden bagels I had purchased ahead of time.

(This one could also work with “doughnut seeds.”)

–I also love the good ol’ dessert dirt in a pot.  I make the cookie part only from these homemade Oreos, with a lot less bother on presentation, of course.  Then we blend them into crumbs and mix with homemade vanilla pudding.  Yum!  Gummy worms are fun too, but we couldn’t find any this year.

Instead, our daughter decided to include an instruction tag that said we could tell if the soil was still “good” by tasting it.

 

And here are some April Fools’ jokes I haven’t tried, but sounded cute:

–Switching your kids into one another’s beds, if they’re heavy sleepers.

–Writing “April Fools!” on the toilet paper that they will unwind.

–Stick googly eyes on fruit or lunchbox foods.

–Switch out morning cereal in box with another kind or with popcorn or Legos, etc.

 

Even our 3-year old got into making up his own pranks this year.  He insisted on hanging some long strands of yarn on the wall for Dada to see.  Then he instructed Dad to leave the room while he cut the strings to be very short.  Sneaky little guy.  ha

Anyway, I’m glad that now as a parent I’ve found an appreciation for this first day of April.  The kids get so excited to play these good-natured pranks.  Instead of seeing it as I used to, a day of feeling gullible or hearing about mean pranks, I see it as a day to be goofy and have fun.  That kind of foolishness for a day sounds pretty good to me.

An Unexpected Mini-Break on the Front Step

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I went to go get the mail yesterday.  And, I don’t know if it was the excitement of sneaking out of the house without kids following me or perhaps just pure clumsiness, but I fell.  We have one step on our front stoop.  One.  And I completely missed said-step and fell.  The decorative rocks of the path scraped up my knees and the palms of my hands.  I was bleeding and sobbing.  (I never think of myself as someone who stores emotions, and, if you know me, you’d wonder how I have any left.  But every time I get hurt, a huge rush of emotions come pouring out along with the hurt and surprise of it all.)

ANYway.  So, I’m sitting on the ground outside, crying because I’m hurt.  Crying because none of our neighbors are out and we don’t know any of them and none of them would even care if I was hurt anyway.  – You get the picture.  I’m feeling awfully sorry for myself.  But even as my tears are streaming down and blood is dripping onto my clothes, I’m simultaneously thinking:

Ahhhh, this is such a lovely little break.  I’m outside.  Nobody knows I’m here.  Nobody is asking me anything.  It’s completely quiet (except for my own sobs, of course).

So, I quieted down and stayed a little longer.  I got as comfortable as I could, given my injuries, and sat and enjoyed the peace and the breeze and the break.  What an unexpected, wonderful gift of time.  Almost, dare I say, like a mini-vacation.

These are the stories that need to be told in high school sex-ed programs, because moments like these – well, that’s parenting.  (Or, rather, what a break from parenting looks like.)

 

(*My husband was inside with the kids, so I wasn’t being completely irresponsible by taking so much time for myself.  Maybe next time I fall, we could get a babysitter and have ourselves a date!)