We started off our day, just as normal as usual–little did the children know that after recess–they would be presented with a mystery!

We re-told the story of The GBB using just the pictures in the story–they did a great job, and remembered to include lots of details and important vocabulary.  

We then touch read our predictable chart and were pretty successful with that as well.

When the children were coming in from recess, I met them in the hallway.  I had prepared my “speech” ahead of time and it went a little something like this:

“Boys and Girls, we have a little problem–the cookies that we were going to use to make our graph this afternoon, they’re missing!”  (They all said “MISSING?!?!?) and I said that they needed to come in the room right away and help me figure out who could have taken them.  At this point, one of our first grade teachers walked by and asked what was going on.  We told her and she got right into character and said that while she was walking down the hallway earlier and had been focused on her clipboard, but had seen a brown blur run by her as she was walking–they all started talking to each other about who they thought could have done this and decided that it was the GBM.  We came into the room and they put their coats away, (I pretended to not know that there was “evidence” on the floor and let them discover it for themselves)–it was hysterical!  You should have heard them–they ran over all out of breath and said, “Mrs. Poindexter there is a paper with words on it on the floor and our bag of cookies, is there but it’s ripped open and empty!” We gathered around the scene.

The “scene of the crime”:

They were SO excited and all wanted to offer up their ideas as to clues and what happened.  We read this gingerbreadmanoriginalletter outloud and it said he left us a map, passports, a book about Las Posadas, and would send us a package from Mexico.  So we called the office to see if we had gotten a package–we had and our secretary rushed it right down!  We opened it and this is what we found: 

I got the general form for this letter from Pam (aka kinderdawg on the KinderKorner listserve), but had to make a few changes to it to fit my kids.  Here is my version: mexicoaroundtheworldletter08

Some of the kids were a little scared that someone had taken something from our room-but after talking a lot about how it was just the Gingerbread Man, they calmed down and really got into it.  When we went to the library later in the afternoon, they were so excited they told our Media Specialist all about it!  She was kind enough to pull some GBM books for the kids to check out–they are so excited about coming to school tomorrow to see what happens next!  (An e-mail from Brazil and another package!)

We also talked about passport and why we need them and what they do as well as the customs offices.  Tomorrow, the kids want to make a list of clues, so they will be doing the writing themselves.  They have decided that this is a big mystery and want to solve it.  I think it’s so funny that the GBM says in his letters that it is him, but they want to take clues and figure it out.  All day after this, they wanted to hunt for clues all around the school.  I think next year, we could take a more “Mysterious” spin on this idea and the letters could be anonymous, but they’ve already put that spin on it this year!  I plan on creating a bulletin board to help them collect clues and evidence on and for everyone else to see, so that should be fun–I feel like I’m on CSI or something! 

Kristen 🙂