Create An "I SPY" Interactive Bulletin Board Game {Video Tutorial}

I should probably give you a little background here, in case you don't know.  I am the coordinator for the Sunday School kiddos at my church.  I work specifically with grades 2-6.  We are known as the S.P.Y. Agents (Spirit Powered Youth).  We picked this name because out of the 10 kids in my Sunday School class, 8 of them are boys. {yikes!}  We definitely needed to come up with a cooler name than "Sunday School."  So, instead, on Sunday mornings, we have S.P.Y. Academy.  Fun, right?  Here's a peak at our SPY HEADQUARTERS, complete with "Scan-In" technology :)  We're very high-tech!

A couple weeks ago we had our big kick off to the school year and our theme was "Mission Possible" where students learned that our mission as SPY Agents is serving others, so they became members of the "Secret SERVICE" for the day.  It was a lot of fun, complete with fake mustaches and SPY glasses for our disguise.  After our first "Mission Briefing," our SPY Agents had several tasks, one of them was using their SPY skills to use picture clues to help them "spy" the Bible story.  I created this bulletin board:

I chose 8 kid-familiar Bible stories (Noah's Ark, the birth of Jesus, David and Goliath...etc).  These were our SPY top secret "cases."  Each case had a magnifying glass and a top secret folder (I cut real file folders down to size so that 8 of them would fit on my bulletin board.)  Inside the magnifying glass was a close-up snippet of the full picture.

For example, this magnifying glass is a close-up of the Adam and Eve Bible story:

Here's the full picture:

I asked students to use the clues shown in the magnifying glass to guess the story.  

Inside the file folder for each story, I will eventually put the full picture so that students can see if their guesses were correct.  For now I just have the question mark slip shown above.  I'm giving students a couple weeks to submit their "Mission Slips."

Once they've made their final guesses, they will place their "Mission Slips" in the "Confidential" file that I stapled to the bulletin board.

To say that the students enjoyed this activity would be an understatement.  They took their mission VERY seriously.

I think I might keep this type of bulletin board game going all year, just switching up the Bible stories.  And the more I thought about this game, the more I thought about how fun it would be to use this idea in a regular classroom!  Think "Can You SPY the Character" (doing close-ups of characters from books you may be reading in your class)  or "Can you SPY the Story Plot" (doing close-ups of major events in a book you are reading)  or "Can you SPY the Animal" (for your science animal unit.)...and so on!

I decided to do a quick little tutorial video to help you make your own SPY magnifying glasses!  Check it out!

I got the magnifying clip art here.

And, if you want to use the "Top Secret" and "Confidential" pieces that I put on the folders and the "Mission Slips" that students filled out,  you can download it for free here.

What could you use this bulletin board game idea for in your classroom?  I'd love to hear your ideas!

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