Things You'll Need:
- Willing participants. Handwriting samples provided by each. A camera. Poster board.
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Step 1
Teach your child some of the basics of graphology, such as how to determine who is lying based on his handwriting. You can get your information from the library or from on-line resources. Devise a scenario. For example: There has been a theft of cookies from Grandma’s cookie jar. Who did it? Round up four suspects: Grandpa, Dad, the child’s brothers or sisters. One of the suspects is guilty and he knows it. You tell that person, before he supplies a handwriting sample, that he is the guilty party but he isn’t to tell anyone.
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Step 2
Don' t participate in the experiment yourself. Your child, the detective, does NOT know who the guilty party is but you do. One adult needs to be the detective's (the child's) assistant.Ask each of the suspects to write a statement claiming their innocent in regard to the theft of the cookies, including the participant who knows he is guilty.
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Step 3
Take mug shots of the guilty parties so that the child can create a visual display for the project. The suspects are encouraged to wear crazy costumes so that they look likes thugs. Have them hold up name cards that bear their fictitious crime names (i.e., Murdering Mona). Make the name cards look like the ones that are used in mug shots.
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Step 4
Instruct the child to study the statements provided by the suspects. If this works, and it should, the person who is deliberating lying about stealing the cookie should leave a clue, or several clues, in his handwriting, although not intentionally, such as a gaping space in between words when he writes “I did not steal the cookie”. If a person is lying, which this person is, he’s apt to pause before writing down the lie and that creates the space, which is something that graphologists look for when determining someone’s truthfulness.
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Step 5
Cheating does not occur because the suspect, who is the liar, does not know the fundamentals of graphology so he’s not purposely writing in a manner that reveals his dishonesty. These traits should show up simply because the person IS lying (and has been asked to lie, by the parent who is assisting the child, in order to see if this experiment works).There are other tell-tale signs that indicate whether someone is being dishonest. These indicators can be found in any book on graphology. However, make sure that you get a book that has a lot of visual instructions so it will appeal to your child and keep his attention.
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Step 6
The child detective makes an arrest based on the handwriting samples. If the child has a good enough understanding of handwriting analysis at this point and if the suspect, who is lying, is true to form and his lies show up in his handwriting, this should be a shut and closed case. If all goes according to plan, the three innocent suspects should not have employed any indicators in their writing that makes the detective, the child, think they are lying, because they aren’t.
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Step 7
The child mounts the mug shots on a piece of poster board along with the handwriting samples and is able to explain to the science fair judges his understanding of graphology and how he came to solve the crime by using handwriting analysis.
