Detective Pack Holiday Activities

This post is about our pack holiday and the activities we did surrounding our theme: detectives.

During the weekend, the girls were working in their sixes to solve a mystery - which leader had stolen the cookies from the cookie jar on the Friday night. There were six activities for them to do over the weekend which would eventually lead to them being able to deduce which leader it was. The activities were cookie testing, fingerprint analysis, footprint analysis, map reading, chromatography on inks, and pets. Below are full descriptions of what they had to do for each one. The girls all had a table in their booklet with all the leaders names down the side and the 6 activities across the top so they could mark in their predictions after each activity.

Cookie Testing

Each six was given a bag containing some cookie chunks which supposedly were found at the scene of the crime and 3 different types of cookie - white choc chip, milk choc chip, and Rolo. They could look at and taste all 3 options and the evidence to decide which flavour it was. They also had a sheet which told them what cookies each Leader preferred so they could put crosses in the relevant box.

Fingerprint Analysis

All the leaders had provided fingerprints for the girls to look at. Brown Owl then gave them 5 which had been found at the scene of the crime for them to match up. Some of them were quite obvious as they were noticeably larger or smaller than the rest but some of them were quite hard for the girls to match up, although they all had fun trying.We then gave them the fingerprint paint so they could look at their own fingerprints and try and work out of they had arches, whorls, loops or a combination or all three. They all enjoyed that too, although a few of them did get a bit carried away and started doing whole hand prints and making pictures from their fingerprints so we had to put a stop to it.

Footprint Analysis

One of the YLs had gone round school and taken rubbings of some of her friend's shoes. The girls were then given a few that had been found 'around the house' and they had to compare them to all the leaders ones to decide who had been in the area. They managed this quite quickly - it was far easier than the fingerprints.

Map Reading

The girls were given a map of the area surrounding the house which had a few points marked on it. Each point had the name of a person and the time they were seen there. The girls had been told that the cookies had been stolen between 5 and 6pm and they could then deduce from the times on the map who was around when the cookies had been stolen.

Chromatography with Ink

The girls were told that some ink had been found at the scene of the crime. They were given some pieces of paper with spots of each leaders favourite ink on them. They then held the bottom of the strip in some water. The water was soaked up through the paper and carries the ink with it, separating it out into its separate colours. Brown Owl had chosen a pen which separated nicely into pink, yellow and blue (technically magenta, yellow and cyan) as the evidence pen and then a couple of the leaders had the same pen, some had a permanent pen (which doesn't separate at all) and some had other pens that only split into two colours. Some of the girls were really good at getting it to work but some others held it too deep in the water and got the whole thing wet, ruining the effect. One six had ruined one of theirs but had somehow done two of another one with the same pen so Brown Owl slyly changed the name on the paper before calling them over and saying she thought they'd missed one! They didn't seem to realise what she'd done and dutifully put a cross in the corresponding box.

Pets

The final activity involved pets. The girls were given a sheet which had 5 different 'animals' on (they were really weird alien creatures) and another one with an identification key on. They could then follow the key to find out the name of the animal that had been seen in the woods around the time of the theft, and thus which leader had been around (as all the Leaders had a different named pet). They found this very easy too. 

At the end of the weekend, each six announced who they thought had stolen the cookies. It had been planned that, during the weekend there could be a few possibilities but at the end there would only be one person who had ticks (or crosses) across the board. That person was Cruella de Vil - one of the YLs who had come up with the idea in the first place - which we thought was fitting. All the sixes had got the correct answer.

I thought it was a good idea to do a theme like this where we could have something ongoing during the weekend, as it made the girls feel more engaged and made them feel special as they were investigating the leaders.