Who Stole Kevin's Cookie? Science Week Investigations

The BIG mystery of British Science Week was: Who Stole Kevin’s Cookies? The whole school collaborated, and our crime scene investigators learned about fingerprinting, fibre analysis, chromatography, powder identification and a whole host of other forensic activities as they worked together to solve the disappearance.

Form 3 taught Form 2 how to use the microscope. They then determined that the fibres found at the scene were in fact a blond hair and some soft black fibres from clothing. They looked at their own hair and fibres from a tennis ball to compare. Their evidence indicated that Mr Yates and Mrs English were amongst the suspects!

Reception and Form 6 joined forces. The super sleuths conducted chromatography tests. The very clumsy culprit had dropped a small piece of paper with a phone number on. Mrs Sliney extracted ink from it and used chromatography methods to analyse the components. This was compared to pens taken from different areas of the school including Mr Yates's desk, Mrs English's desk, the school office and the Art room. Mrs English's pen and Mr Yates's pen were close matches!

Form 6 also showed Reception how to do their own chromatography on felt tip pens.

Nursery worked with Form 5 to decode secret messages. A piece of paper was found in the kitchen with an imprint. A Clue!! The investigators used torches to figure out that the imprint said, 'First Aid Course'.

Together they made their own secret messages to each other using white wax crayon and then painted over them with water colour to show the message up. Daniel's secret message (drawn by his Form 5 partner) was a flower, so he felt that the culprit could be his Nanny as she loves flowers! He thought she may have dug a tunnel through to the kitchen to steal the cookies.

Nursery and Form 5 made a list of their potential suspects which included Mrs English, Mr Yates and possibly even Mrs Fleming - not to mention Daniel's Nanny!

Form 1 and 4 collaborated to study fingerprint and footwear impressions. They used trays of flour to make impressions and compare patterns. They deduced that Mrs English made the footwear impression in the kitchen. They then took each other's fingerprints and using magnifiers looked for whorls, loops and arches. Upon comparing the fingerprint from the scene, to some of the staff fingerprints, they concluded that the cookies were in fact taken by Mrs English!

During interview, Mrs English admitted her actions and said that the reason she took them was because she thought they might make a poorly child feel better! I suppose we can forgive her for that?