My girls and I played a game I named Superhero Mystery Game as a fun way to practice mindfulness by tapping into the visual senses while doing something quietly and slowly.   We first put on capes and masks to become superheroes, and we gave each other superhero names: SuperHawk, SuperPrincessCheetah and SuperElmo.  This really set the tone before we even began, and my girls were immediately engaged.

We then had to quietly tip-toe through the house trying to find clues in every room to solve a mystery.  The trick was though that we had to use our superhero eyes and laser-beam focus to find clues in the house that we had never noticed before.  We whispered to each other as we walked around super sleek and stealthy.

We found spots and textures on the walls we hadn’t seen before, and found crayon marks on the floor. We noticed a small piece of “jewel” which was a remnant from holiday decorations.  And we noticed a dotted pattern on the hardwood floors beneath our dining table, and a mark that resembled a stamp.  And with each new clue, we talked about what that could mean to solve our mystery- like perhaps a princess was drawing with a red crayon as she was walking on the dotted path over to our holiday gifts?!?  After about 15 minutes of playing, we decided it was time to just document our clues and finish playing another time.  My 5-year old ran to get her crayons and then drew out the clues that we discovered.  We saved her drawing so that we could become superheroes again soon.  Perhaps the clues from our next game will help us solve this incredible mystery! 🙂

There can be a lot of ways to play the Superhero Mystery Game.  You can try it with other senses like sound and smell.  You can set up a scavenger hunt and make it more deliberate.  I wanted it to be an easy activity so didn’t want to really plan much out.  But perhaps next time I would at least start with what it was that we were actually trying to solve, as I was trying to organically figure that out along the way and wasn’t quite sure how to end it! Haha.  This activity was also great because it was something my 2-year old can actively participate in.  As we walked around the house, she was right there with us the entire time in her cape and whispering with us as we found little clues.  Just getting into costume and trying to uncover a mystery quietly was really appealing to my kiddos, so the three superheroes will reunite again soon.