How To Ideas for Teaching Cub Scouts and Kids About Fingerprinting - Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?

This idea came from Jill Ball... thanks Jill!

Bear Scouts Achievement 7a, Law Enforcement is a Big Job - Practice one way police gather evidence: taking fingerprints, taking shoe prints, or taking tire track casts.

We started the activity with talking about the importance of helping our Law Enforcers by being good citizens and helping other.

I gave each boy their own notebook and pencil.   I then "swore" them in as "Honorary Akela Detectives".  We started by fingerprinting each boy.  I first had them wipe their hands with wet wipes and we used a stamp pad to finger print each boy in his note book.  We then looked at the finger prints though a magnifying glass to try and determine the type of their finger prints (loops, whorls, etc).

I then made up a fun finger print game for them to play.  Ahead of time I took pictures of people from our neighborhood that each boy knew and would recognize, one of them was our Den Chief.  I took two sets of finger prints from each person.  I taped one set of prints along with their picture to a poster board along with the words, "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?"  On a second poster I taped the other set of prints with the location where they were found (ice cream carton, candy bar wrapper, etc with one being on the cookie jar).  The boys then had to match up the finger prints to figure out who's matched with the cookie jar.  I was a great activity and the boys loved it.

After the activity, I also let them play around with making animals out of their fingerprints using the book Ed Emberley's Fingerprint Drawing Book.  They LOVED this activity!