Toddler Theme: Detective

We spent the past week doing a fun exploration into the world of mysteries, clues and detectives.  Mia has always been a big fan of scavenger hunt activities and looking for "treasures" so I thought she'd especially like to solve a mock crime.  Our whole week centered around this one activity and it involved more parental prep than most theme weeks.  It is not difficult prep but I wanted to give you an idea just how simple these toddler themes can be, even at their hardest. 

I did all of the prep Sunday evening and it took me about 20 minutes.  It should take you around 10 minutes because I've linked all the resources here and included the fingerprint cards that I created.  First, I determined what item would go missing.  Kitty is Mia's buddy so she'd care to find him but she's not so attached to him that she'd be upset at his cat-napping.  I made a ransom note on a blank 4x6 index card with magazine letter cutouts and one fingerprint.  Then I took a few more blank index cards and wrote out the words (one word each card) -- LOOK, UNDER, YOUR, BED -- in white crayon.  I happened to have a very official detective-looking envelope (thank you Anthropologie.com!), so I tucked the clues inside.  I also created and printed out several copies of a suspect fingerprint card.  And lastly, I printed out the blank faces drawing page from DabblesandBabbles.com and the FBI Agent ID card from ItsyBitsyFun.com.  All are linked at the bottom of this post.  

While Mia was eating breakfast one morning, I hid Kitty under her bed and taped the ransom note to her door.  Once she discovered the note, it was a whirlwind of clue-seeking art projects all day.  We started with fingerprinting.  She fingerprinted me, attempted to fingerprint a dog, but mostly she liked fingerprinting herself.  

Next, we got out the watercolors and went to work on the folio of invisible clues.  She's really into letter recognition right now and got really excited to see letters magically appear on each card.  As those dried, we used the blank faces printable to make police sketches of the suspect.  Once the clue cards dried, we circled back to them to figure out what they said and rushed off to rescue Kitty.  Case closed!     

A summary of all Detective Week activities with links:

ACTIVITY: Pretend play with magnifying glass, cape and FBI Agent ID card from ItsyBitsyFun.com

ART PROJECT: Watercolored clues to find Kitty, Made police sketches of the suspect using the blank faces drawing page from DabblesandBabbles.com, Fingerprinted persons of interest using the suspect fingerprint cards (printed on 4x6 index cards) I created

OUTING: Nature scavenger hunt around the neighborhood to find clues of spring

BOOKS: I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen, Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems, Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard

What are your favorite mystery-themed books for toddlers?