This article describes an activity that one science teacher uses with her eighth grade class on the first day of school. Wanting to start the year off "right" (whatever that is), this teacher purposely plans to model the thinking behavior she expects from her students and to let them have some fun to settle those first-day jitters. She also wants to convince them that they already possess many of the skills necessary to answer science questions. Once students have settled in, she wheels out a cart covered with numbered brown paper bags. Each bag is closed with a stick woven through two holes that have been punched in the folded down top. Curiosity gets the better of many students who want to know, "What's in the bags?" Never one to answer questions she wants them to answer, the teacher instead poses the question, "How many of you have ever been able to figure out the contents of a wrapped gift? How did you do it?" Immediately hands shoot into the air, and she selects three or four students to share brief anecdotes as the teacher passes out the related activity worksheet. Together they read through each part of the worksheet, and she instructs them that they will work independently to deduce the contents of two bags. (They must keep their findings of the first bag a secret, as she redistributes the bags for a second round.) The teacher then assures them there is nothing living or gross in any of the bags, but that there is something (in addition to air) inside. The activity and its outcomes are described in this article.