Who Stole the Wise Old Owl!?

At the beginning of last summer I started booking things that we’d like to do with the Brownies in the upcoming year. One thing I knew I wanted to book was a presentation from the Hug-A-Tree and Survive organization. I booked for April which was getting into our camping season and we counted down the weeks until we could have our presenter in.

Unfortunately a day before our presentation was supposed to happen I got a call. Our presenter had been in an accident and although he was okay now he wouldn’t be able to come in for our meeting. Oh No! I had nothing else planned! We had just one night before our meeting and nothing to do with the girls. After a night of chatting with the other leaders, googling and pinteresting we had come up with a plan. Tomorrow we’d complete the Alberta CSI challenge. Our Owl was going to be kidnapped!

This meeting took a little bit of time to set up because we wanted it to have a crime scene feel. I put a note on the door outside our meeting space that the Brownies had to wait outside. A few times I went in and out and made it look like I was very concerned about something. The girls were so confused and had so many ideas about what could be going on inside.  As soon as all the girls got there we let them inside.

Shock and panic! The girls were aghast to see that their beloved owl was missing. Even the parents were concerned (that’s them peering in from the hallway). The girls knew it was going to be a fun meeting and we sat down to discuss what happened and how we could get the owl back.

I told the girls that the toadstool was like that when I got here. The owl was missing and I couldn't find her anywhere. What was also left were case files with each of their names on them. It looks like tonight they were all going to have to learn to be detectives. They would be learning some new skills, finding clues and hopefully finding out beloved owl!

Before the meeting I made up these case files. Throughout the meeting our girls completed various CSI themed activities and were rewarded with clues. Once they put all of the clues together they would be able to figure out: who took the owl, how she was lured away and where she was being hidden.

The first activity we did together as a group. The girls did a type of Kim's game where they were shown a group of objects on a tray for one minute. After the minute the tray was covered and they had to use their super memory skills to write down what they say. After this we tried the traditional Kim's game where we would remove an object from the tray and the girls had to guess which one was missing! After the girls completed the activity they were rewarded with clues to the mystery. 

After the memory game the girls split into their fairy circles and we did rotations of: fingerprint identification, code breaking and invisible ink. After each group completed the activity they were given a clue to the mystery. We designed our meeting similar to the way the board game Clue is laid out. Each clue the girls got was more information. Once all the clues were found the girls met in the middle and discussed what each person got. They found out that based on what was left over the Nymphs had taken the Owl using a Freeze Ray and she was being held in the storage room!

The girls rushed to the Storage Room but were met with LAZERS!!!! On the other side of the lazer patch there were three boxes. The girls deciphered a secret code to tell them which box the owl was in and then quickly scooted through the lazer grid.


The secret clue said that the owl was frozen with a freeze ray so they knew that she would be cold. Using a thermal camera (our leader Tawny Owl is proficient in these and did a little info session for the girls) the girls looked at the boxes and figured out which box contained the owl.

 The made their choice and - 

THE OWL WAS SAVED!!

This was an amazing meeting. The girls had a blast and learned all sorts of new things!

If you are interested in running a CSI meeting with your Brownies feel free to use my printables. You can click here to get them!

Brownie CSI Meeting Documents