Program date: 5/16/19
I found some really cool spy crafts on Pinterest so I decided to go for it! I’ve had some kiddos super into spy books so I figured this would be a good program. I was right and the kids had a great time!
We did three crafts, all from Pinterest. I will link to them as I describe them below!
You can see the basic idea here, but I actually designed my own sheets of name tags. They look like this:
Our agents’ first mission was to choose a super secret code name. I printed out some examples of those “the first letter of your first name + the last letter of your last name = your spy name” pages for reference, but I told the kids they could pick any name they wanted. My code name was Flash Danger!
After they chose their names, we fingerprinted them. There is a box for each finger above, so they had to wash their whole hand afterwards.
After that we ran yarn through the holes I pre-poked in the nametags so we could wear them!
The link provides a download for the secret code maker printable! The kids got two pages, one with the letters and one with the symbols. I gave them some time to decorate each piece, and then they cut them out and we used a brad to hook them together. I printed out the message sheet (also available in the link) so the kids could write a secret code. There was a section on the sheet that said “to read this message, line __ up with __”. I explained the importance in lining up one letter to one symbol and writing that in, so that another person would be able to decode their message. Then they wrote out the symbols!
This was a little theoretical for some of them but they got the hang of it!
Our last craft was a little rough. I have done something similar before (but a little more professionally done) and it was PERFECT but DIYing it didn’t work out well.
To do this activity, you start with a blue crayon, and write a message lightly on white paper. I had the kids all write “hello” because we were running short on time. After that, using a red pen and yellow highlighter, make cross hatches and scribbles over the message. Because the three types of writing utensils are different, they won’t combine, but it should make the blue message hard to see. Then using red acetate, you should be able to see only the blue message! Like I said, this one wasn’t great.
I did this on a printer for our Escape From Dr. Frankenstein’s Library program, printing a message in light blue, and then random letters in red, yellow, and orange in all different directions over the design to hide the blue, and it worked PERFECTLY. For reference, I would totally do it that way again.
Miss Meg's Library 