Mystery In the Library – Displays and Activities 

Displays

I used the Cricut machine to cut out some detective silhouettes. The font used to create the letters is Earwig Factory. 

For the front entrance display, I again used the Cricut to cut small mystery-themed shapes for the border. I created a few mystery theme book posters. Our students love books that are wrapped up with clues on the front. We have done this before for Library Lovers Day as blind date with a book. This time, we only wrapped mystery books, which was very popular with the students.

A pop-up display of mystery and spy books for our younger students. This display emptied daily and we had to continually restock – luckily we have lots of spy, detective and mystery books.

Activities

Character Hunt

I used the Cricut (are you sensing how much I love that machine yet?) to cut 12 character shapes. I added numbers and created a simple form. The student had to find the 12 shapes hidden around the library and write down the names of the characters. We also shared this on social media for the older students. Some were simple and others a little tricker (can you spot number 10 in the display picture above? This one stumped all but four students).

Morse Code Scavenger Hunt

I created a Morse Code hunt thanks to the templates from The Learning Curve – https://annatyszka.blogspot.com/2020/04/morse-code-scavenger-hunt.html I created four clues which led students around the library, collecting parts of a quote from a Nancy Drew novel. I was surprised how many students were into decoding these clues – especially the younger students.

Spy Hunt

One of our awesome Year 6 students created a really tricky hunt that had students solving clues and finding clues hidden in books around the library. These clues included shelf and dewey numbers, hints to the titles and authors. We printed each of the clues and stuck them to the back of each of the books. We froze the 10 books in question so they couldn’t be borrowed. Students were working in teams trying to solve the clues.