The Sweetheart Heist

For Valentine's Day, we had to solve a mighty caper...

Channeling Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, even Nate the Great himself, we had to act as literary sleuths.  A mystery crook with a powerful sweet tooth had lifted all of the sweetheart candies from our classroom.  This fellow left behind only some powdery crumbs and some rhyming clues.  Our search started in the classroom and took us to exotic locales like the library, nurse's room, gymnasium, kitchen, Coach's office, guidance office, admissions office, and finally to the office of Mr. Powers himself!

(Mr. Powers assures us that he was not part of the heist:  the mystery crook merely placed them in his room.)

I love this type of learning because it's active, collaborative, and downright fun.  The clues grew increasingly more difficult.  Armed with clipboards, we speculated about each answer and put our inference skills to the test.

Mariana finds and reads the first clue aloud.

James looked inside a reference book to find a new clue.

How many second graders can you fit into the nurse's office?

Here we are at the gym.  Mr. Parker promises that he had no part in it.

Natalie reads to our gang in the admissions office.

After we found our sweethearts, there was work to be done!  We estimated, measured, and composed a silly short story about the Sweetheart Snatcher.