Scooby Doo and Mystery Homeschool Unit Study 🕵️‍♂️

My kids have had a fascination with mysteries for as long as I can remember. Tree House Detectives, on Netflix was one of their favorite televisions shows and A to Z Mysteries were some of the first chapter books I read to them. We’ve played the kid version of Clue, since Jake was two. Jacob currently wants to be a detective when he grows up. Somehow along the way they discovered Scooby Doo and the rest of the mystery gang and have never looked back.

I’ve learned the past few months that the whole “unit study” method works really well for us in homeschooling. We love a good theme around here and this theme serves as the anchor that nicely organizes our learning. The theme is something of high interest for the kids that they pick. The result of this is they are highly engaged and active in the learning process.

I knew coming back from Christmas break due to the fact that it is…

1. January in Maine ❄️

2. we are all sun and vitamin D deficient 🌨

3. cold and 🥶

4. most likely sick 🤒

that an engaging unit study would be a high priority. The kids suggested Scooby Doo and that sounded just perfect to me.

Here’s a snapshot of what it looked like for us…

Science

Forensic Science

Forensic Science was the main focus of science during this unit study. A very kid friendly and age appropriate take on forensic science. I found a kit on Amazon that included activities about fingerprinting, chromatography, etc, but honestly I won’t link it because I didn’t really need to buy it. There are a ton of free ideas online and in books that I checked out of the library that were just as helpful.

This video gave us a great kid friendly overview about what Forensic Science is.

Fingerprints

We watched this awesome video and then did the suggested experiment. We lifted fingerprints using a pencil, paper and scotch tape. We dusted for fingerprints using cornstarch (this was a lot harder than it looked). The kids took all of their fingerprints and learned about the three main types of fingerprints.

Energy

We also reviewed a little physics this unit and explored Fred from Scooby Doo’s traps. We reviewed the two types of energy we discussed during our Home Alone assignment. We studied Fred’s traps by watching this YouTube video and then the kids got a chance to create some of their own mini traps using Magna-Tiles, Legos, etc.

Social Studies

What is the Story of Scooby Doo

We learned the history of Scooby Doo by reading this book, What is the Story of Scooby Doo, by Andrew Thomson. We learned how the show was originally created and how it evolved over time.

Highlights Mystery

A couple of years ago our good friends gifted us these adventure cases from Highlights. We completed two of them and loved them, then forgot about the last two…until now. They fit perfectly into this unit study and the kids learned a bit about Spain and Italy, while practicing their logic skills to solve the Mystery. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like these are for sale anymore, which is a bummer. You might be able to find them used if you google the info below.

Highlights Top Secret Adventures Case #81241 The Colosseum Calamity

Highlights Top Secret Adventures Case #11347 The Incident in Iberia

Math

We still mostly stick to our math curriculum and I don’t really tie it into our unit studies yet. This is purely due to my lack of confidence in this subject area. I’m sure with time I will grow more comfortable doing my own thing with math, but for now we stick to Rightstart Math for Anika and Eureka Math for Jacob. Anika and I also use Multiplication Facts that Stick and Exploring Creation with Mathematics. Anika dislikes traditional math. Dislikes it so much I’ve customized a math curriculum for her this year, tying together some excellent resources I’ve found and going really slow and letting her take the lead. Jake has no problem with math and seems to enjoy it, so we have been flying through his curriculum with zero problem.

Measurement

The Young Mind’s Inspired Website had this fun Scooby Doo lesson plan and I did try out these activities about measurement with the kids.

Logic

We also played this logic game called Dog Crimes that I purchased on Amazon.

Language Arts

Writing

The kids decided to write their own mystery. Jake’s ended up about five pages long, one sentence each page with pictures and with a to be continued, but he’s five and I’ll take it.

Reading

We read a lot. Here are a few of the books we read.

Hermelin The Detective Mouse, Mini Grey

Detective LaRue: Letters from the Investigation, Mark Teague

Grandpa’s Teeth, Rod Clement

Scooby-Doo! That’s Snow Ghost, Molly Wigand

Scooby Doo and the Cupcake Caper, Sonia Sander

Scooby-Doo’s Laugh-Out Loud Jokes!, Michael and Scott Jeralds

Encyclopedia Brown Boy Detective

Hardy Boys Secret Files

Audiobooks

The Double Drastic Time Capsule Caper, Van Temple

Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief, Wendelin Van Draanen

The Ballpark Mysteries, David Kelly

Scooby Doo Mad Libs

Anika’s language arts curriculum places a lot of emphasis on nouns, verbs, adjectives pronouns, plural nouns, proper nouns, etc. She hates it. But you know what she doesn’t hate? Mad Libs. Do you know what you need to know in order to fill out a Mad Lib? What nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, plural nouns and proper nouns are. She has zero problems doing this when filling out a Mad Lib. They have mad libs themes for EVERYTHING now. Even SCOOBY Doo Mad Libs.

Vocabulary Words

I introduced these vocabulary words that we heard A LOT…

Clues, Mystery, Suspect, Crime, Detective, Red Herring, alibi and motive.

Videos

You cannot do a Scooby Doo themed unit without watching Scooby Doo. It’s just not possible. We watched a A Pup Named Scooby Doo, starting with the “The Schnook who Took My Comic Book” but also watched episodes of the original Scooby Doo as well as the two Scooby Doo live action movies for our Friday pizza and a movie nights.

Cooking

The kids picked out a couple of recipes to make from The Scooby-Doo Cookbook, Katrina Jorgensen. I didn’t get a photo but they were indulgent sugar filled drinks that the kids were quite please with. One was called a “Shaggy Shake” and the other “Lost My Glasses Lemonade”.

The Case of Kidnapped Miss Kitty

To end this unit study in a fun hands on way I created a crime for the kids to solve. Anika has a stuffed cat that she calls Kitty. She sleeps with it at night and every morning brings it down and puts it in the living room. I left this note out on the table for her and Jake to find.

Then they needed to do things to figure out who cat napped her. They came up with a list of suspects with motives, dusted for fingerprints, searched for other clues, interviewed potential witness’s and suspects, checked alibi’s, determined if there was a red herring, etc. If you’d like a copy of this activity it can be located here.

Scooby Doo Treasure Hunt

We love a treasure hunt around here and decided to finish up this unit study with a Scooby Doo Themed treasure hunt.

The prize was a copy of Clue, the Scooby Doo Edition.

You can find a copy of the Scooby Doo Treasure Hunt here.