PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Zippel Elementary School fourth-graders recently cracked the case of the tampered recipe.
For the first time in about six years, teacher Mary Graham got her fellow fourth-grade teachers and students together for an after-school activity aptly named, Mystery Night.
“The fourth-grade teachers were talking last spring about doing something to promote community. It seems like when we do these after-school events with the kids, they just have a great time, and all of a sudden, they’re ready to learn,” said Graham. “I thought a great community event would be Mystery Night and have it near Halloween.”
The premise for the case was that Teresa at Teresa’s Corner Café & Bakery called to say that she had a mystery for the fourth-graders to solve. She decided to put pumpkin chocolate chip cookies in the bakery, and to make the addition of the new cookie fun for her employees, she decided to have a contest to see which employee had the best recipe.
Employees submitted a recipe and a sample of the cookies. Teresa decided to have each employee bake their recipe at the restaurant to see which cookie not only tasted best, but was easy to make in the bakery. When the employees baked their cookies, one recipe was a total failure. She knew that someone had tampered with the recipe, and it was the students’ job — based on the evidence — to determine how the recipe was tampered with and by whom.
“I’ve written many of the mysteries we’ve done before,” said Graham, “and I happened to be eating at Teresa’s one day and it came to me that we could do ‘The Case of the Tampered Recipe.’ Once I had an idea, it just blossomed into the whole story. Teresa [Bonville] jumped on board with it, and we all had a lot of fun.”
The students were brought together in the cafeteria for an introduction and then returned to their classrooms where their individual teachers helped oversee the “crime labs.”
Crime labs included doing a fingerprint test using Ninhydrin, pencil rubbing on a recipe card, ink testing to see which ink matched that on the recipe card, using clay to match the imprint of a tool that was found at the “crime scene,” and testing samples of powder (flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder) for reactions to iodine and vinegar.
To help create more of a story, the fourth-grade teachers each portrayed a waitress.
In the end, the students were to discover that the perpetrator — played by Graham — took all of the baking powder out of the canister and replaced it with flour.
“[In our storyline] when the waitress was making her cookies, rather than putting in baking powder she was really just adding more flour. The culprit also changed it so instead of 2 teaspoons of baking powder they were putting in 2 tablespoons of flour which makes for a gooey, gummy recipe rather than a nice cookie,” said Graham. “That’s what the students will discover by testing the powders.”
A self-professed lover of mysteries and forensics, Graham said Mystery Night was meant to be a fun, learning experience.
“It’s a fun science lab,” she said. “You learn how chemicals react with each other, and we can turn around and use that in our science classes later on. There’s also science in terms of the oils on the skin and skin cells during the fingerprinting activity.
“I hope the kids learn a little bit about chemistry and science … and maybe develop more of an interest in science,” she said. “Above all, I hope they have a great time.”
The junior detectives said they enjoyed Mystery Night.
“It’s been really fun,” said Abigail Michaud. “Not only was it fun, but we learned things, too. I learned that when you put baking soda and vinegar together it fizzes. That was neat.”
“This was all brand new to me; I had never done any of this before,” said Austin Plourde. “It was cool. I liked being able to stay after school. Usually when I go home I don’t have much to do, but this was a fun activity.”
Connor Albertson agreed.
“It’s pretty fun because it’s not like any thing I’ve ever done before. I really like mysteries and it was amazing to be able to solve one,” he said. “This is different from what we do in science class because we’re all working together and we’re not sitting at a desk writing.”
To conclude the activity, Teresa’s donated pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for the students to enjoy. Participation in Mystery Night was not mandatory, although the majority of fourth-graders did attend.
