Kids love to play spy. My boys drool over all the fancy spy toys at the store. Those toys are fun, but you don’t need special toys to be a spy. Spies do need undercover disguises though. Dig through the dress-up box. They might also like some sunglasses, a flashlight, and one of Dad’s hats.
And spies need secret codes for their messages. (Don’t tell them that they are reading and writing, and using logical thinking skills.) You should tell them that coding and decoding messages is a science called cryptology.
One of the simplest codes is to write words backwards. The message “Meet me in living room” would read” Moor gnivil ni em teem”. Another easy code is to substitute a number for each letter of the alphabet. A=1, B=2, C=3, and so on until you get to Z=26. So a message that says “Look under the bed” would read 12-15-15-11 21-14-4-5-18 20-8-5 2-5-4. A harder version of this number code is to assign random numbers to each letter. In this case A might equal 13, B could equal 4, and so on, as long as there aren’t any repeats. You can also substitute letters for letters, so that an A would really mean a B, and a B would really mean a C. For example, C-A-T would be spelled D-B-U. A harder version of that code is substitute random letters for one another.
Leave some codes for your kids to solve. Maybe they can find the box of cookies you hid before the dog does!
If the kids get into spying and cryptology, they might be interested in learning how codes have been used through history. Check out code books like Spy Science: 40 Secret-Sleuthing, Code-Cracking, Spy-Catching Activities for Kids and Secret Codes for Kids. They may also like reading about fictional mysteries like the Cam Jansen and Nate the Great books. Both series let the reader solve the mystery as the story unfolds. And don’t forget the classic Encyclopedia Brown series.
More sites to help your young spies:
Costumes and Clothes – Extending the Life of a Child’s Wardrobe