Clue - A Summer Activity

My mom is very creative. Anyone who knows her, already knows that, and anyone who has read older posts about her know that.

Ever since I was little (Maybe 12ish?), my mom has been doing a summer activity with us kids. It all started because she was sick of us saying we were bored all the time - kids do that, right? She came up with an activity to have us get involved in reading with incentives to keep us going. I think the first summer activity she came up with was reading around the United States. And every minute we read was like driving a mile to our destination, which was the capitals of each state. And once we got to that destination, there was a reward to go with it.

Then it transformed into a summer activity to get us more involved in exercise and reading, and now the summer activities involve reading, spending time for ourselves, spiritual tasks, exercising and service. That way we have a well rounded summer doing everything as opposed to just reading. And there is always a reward at the end. :)

Yes, that's right. We still do them! My mom comes up with a themed activity to base all those tasks around. This summer's activity theme is "clue". As in the actual gameboard clue. It comes with a personalized game board and everything.

There are pictures of all the rooms in our house. And each sibling's game board has actual rooms that are in their house. My kitchen is my actual kitchen. I took a picture of each room with my mom's camera, since she has a zoom lens.

And each person in our family (except Alexis, she's too small to participate in the summer activity this year) is a person on the gameboard that moves across the squares to get to the rooms. Here are Jonas and I.

 And Clint. I drew them. :)

In order to move across the squares to get the the rooms, we have to exercise 10 minutes for each square. Once we get to a room (notice there are doors to get into each room), we can look at one of the two envelopes in the room - each room has an opening at the top to store the two mini envelopes. In order to look at the second envelope, we have to leave the room, enter another room, and then go back into that room. That way we're exercising more and it takes longer to complete the game. We have all summer to finish this.

Notice, there are secret passages in the corner rooms to get the opposite corner room.

The activity is on the envelope.  We can only look and complete that activity once we've been in the room. No cheating and looking at the other activities in rooms we haven't been in yet. Some of the activities require time to complete, so once we know the activity we can keep moving to different rooms while we work on them.

 
And look, there's even starting points, just like the actual game Clue.

If you have ever played clue before, there is a murder and you have to guess who did it, with what device in which room. Once you've been in all the rooms and found all the clues, by process of elimination, you can guess who did it, etc.

The same thing applies to this summer activity. Once you complete an activity, you can look inside the envelope to see the clue. And once you have seen all the clues, by process of elimination, the last suspect, device and room is it. We keep track of everything, the clues and activities, in our "Detective Journals" she gave us.

These are examples of some of the clues and what they look like.

A suspect clue. My mom and dad.

 

A device clue. 

As you can tell, this summer activity goes along perfectly with photography, because my mom took pictures of every device, we took pictures of every room in our house and she has pictures of each suspect (each person participating in the summer activity). And by the way, we aren't solving a murder, we are solving who stole the family jewels with what device and what room. Not so gory that way.  :)

Obviously you can accommodate this to however you want. You can have a child read 10 minutes to move across the squares instead of exercise and the activities can be whatever you want, like go out for ice cream as a family, or play a game, etc. Whatever you want, or whatever your child likes. That way, everyone has something to do during the summer, everyone is happy and not bored.

And in case you're wondering, once we find out who did it, with what device and in which room, if we are correct (which we will be because we will have seen all the clues), then there is a reward. Last years reward for participating in the summer activity was a $25 amazon gift card. I'm motivated by rewards so I'm all for this! I'll let you know what the reward is when we're all done.

Creative, right? I love my mom. If I turn out half as awesome as her, I'll be happy with that. She could write a book with all the creative ideas she does during summers and randomly throughout the year. Actually, maybe I'll help her do that.