Who-Dun-It?
By Molly McGuire ~ Illustrated by Burton Morris

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Invitations
For each invitation, cut a strip of colorful paper 9 inches long and 3 inches wide. Fold it in half to make it 41/2 inches by 3 inches. With the fold at the top, decorate the front to look like a small notebook cover with a big question mark and "Who-Dun-It?" written on it.

Inside, write "You’re invited to a Mystery Party! Be at the scene of the crime on" and list the time and date of the party. Below that, put your name, classroom number, "Please let us know if you're able to attend."

You might suggest that each student bring along two baseball caps. Make them into a Sherlock Holmes hat by wearing them together with one turned backward.

Decorations
Use a jewelry box for a centerpiece, or decorate a small box to look like one. Arrange a few pieces of toy jewelry around the box. Place a large sign reading "Stolen Jewels Were Here" in the jewelry box.

To make footprints, trace around a pair of shoes several times on poster board. Cut out the shapes and put them on the wall, the floor, or across the tablecloth, leading toward and away from the box of jewels.

Draw large magnifying glasses, fingerprints, question marks, and arrows on different colors of poster board. Cut them out and hang them from the ceiling with string, or fasten them to a cord hung across the room.

Refreshments
Fill a muffin tin with cupcake papers. Put a jelly bean or a few raisins in two of the papers. Fill all of the papers with muffin or cupcake batter and bake them. Give a prize to the two detectives who get the "jewels."

Pour fruit punch into a large punch bowl, and float thin slices of lime, orange, and lemon in the bowl to make "Floating Jewels Punch."

Prepare other party foods, such as crackers and cheese or peanut butter-filled celery sticks. Serve them on a tray or cookie sheet labeled with a card that reads "Exhibit A" and tell your students they can "Eat the Evidence!"

Games
Find the Missing Jewels
Before the party, hide small paper bags filled with jelly beans in different places around the party room. Make a separate map for each place, showing furniture shapes, doors, windows, and so on. Place an X where a "sack of jewels" is hidden. Roll up each map and tie it with string.

At the party, give each student a map, and let everyone find his or her own bag of jewels.

Remember the Clues
Sit in a circle. Each student thinks of a one-or two-word clue, such as "black," "eight o'clock," "silver button," etc. Go around the circle, with each student saying his or her own clue plus all the clues said before. Continue around a second time until each student has had a chance to recite the entire list of clues. Students remembering all the clues get a prize.

Can You Name It?
Before the party starts, find objects that might be identifiable by the way they sound when you use them, such as a stapler, a pair of scissors, a pencil and pencil sharpener, a hole punch, and so on.

Divide your students into two teams. Have the teams stand with their backs to you and their eyes shut. Tell each team that, as you make a sound with each object, the first team to identify what you're doing wins a point. The team earning the most points wins the game.

Escape Route
This game can be played if your party area has a lot of open space. Set up the obstacle course ahead of time. Arrange for your students to zigzag around "cars" (three chairs), crawl through a "tunnel" (under a table), jump over a "pond" (a pan of water), walk a "tight rope" (a rope lying on the ground), tiptoe around "alarms" (pieces of cardboard scattered on the ground), and get back home (a mat on the floor).

Divide your students into two teams. Players must go through the obstacle course one at a time, holding the jewels (a bag of jelly beans). When players get back home and touch the mat, they pass the jewels on to the next player, who then goes through the course. Do one practice run for each person. Then time each team as they race through, one team at a time. The faster team two out of three times wins.