The Detective badge focuses on using skills of observation to solve a puzzle. Girls also learn about using codes and identification methods used by real detectives, like fingerprinting. For my troop, we completed this badge at the kickoff of cookie season and the clues focused on solving a cookie crime!
Below is a list of activities to complete the Detective badge. Find ideas for more Brownie and Junior badges here.
Decode the Message
At the start of our meetings, I like to have an activity that the girls can work on as they arrive to keep them busy. There are several types of methods to encode a message and many resources online. I chose to use a decoder wheel for the girls to learn a shift cipher, which is a simple replacement code.
The girls cut out and assembled the decoder wheel that I got from this great resource.
I provided the key of C12 and left this message on the board for them to decode and answer:
CNGZ’Y EUAX LGBUXOZK IUUQOK?
Which decodes to “What’s your favorite cookie?”
The girls were really into making this decoder wheel and helping each other learn how to use it. Then they started making coded messages to each other.
Solve a Cookie Crime
The majority of the requirements for the Detective badge were covered during the solving of a “cookie crime” – two actually!
I divided the girls into small groups of three and provided clues in the form of Witness Statements and Police Evidence. The crime involved Girl Scout cookies stolen from two locations and the girls needed to determine which cookies were stolen and who stole them.
Our troop uses ABC Bakers so the cookies used in this activity are based on those varieties.
The Suspects
Each girl got a sheet of suspects that included the name, cartoon picture, finger print, and shoe print for each person.
The Crimes
One box of cookies was stolen from a cookie booth. The other was stolen from a front porch. Clues specified whether they were for the Cookie Booth Caper or the Front Porch Felony. The girls worked on both crimes at once, but you could do one at a time.
The Clues
You can download the list of clues I used below or write your own. I focused on different characteristics like physical descriptions, smells of cookies, and colors of boxes.
For the police evidence, the girls had to look at foot prints for one case and fingerprints for the other. I also added things like video footage (in the form of cartoons).
A fun twist for this activity was how the girls got each clue. They selected one person from each group to go up to the troop leaders. Then the girls had to answer a trivia question about Girl Scouts, our troop, or cookie selling to earn the clue. Because we were starting cookie season, questions focused on the price of boxes, what forms of payment do we accept, what we use the money for, etc.
Solving the Cookie Crime
Each girl had an answer sheet to make notes and mark off options as clues arrived.
If you want to use the answer sheet and “helpful information” with suspect details, use the link below.
Did the troop solve the cookie crime?
The girls were very excited when they learned we would be solving a cookie crime in our meeting. Many of their teachers use in-classroom escape room activities, so they were aware of the general concept. They worked in teams of three and there was a lot of animated discussion each time they got a clue.
As I expected, one group mixed the clues for the two crimes and got stuck. This was a great opportunity for the girls to help each other figure out what they did wrong.
