A Mission for the Littlest Agents

Not wanting to leave the two year old out of the secret agent fun, I devised a little mission for her this afternoon. I snapped pictures of different places around the house and then imported them into Word. After printing out the pictures, I glued them onto index cards and labeled them with a number. Then I hid the cards around the house.

Agent A's first card was a picture of the "step stoo" in the bathroom. I asked her to show me, and she proudly marched to the bathroom, where she found card #2.

This card had a picture of the green bin in the toy shelf. Again, I asked her to show me where in the house we could find the green bin. Of course when she opened it up, there was another card.

This little hunt continued all over the house until at last she found the final clue.

Tucked inside the bouquet my husband brought home last night (Happy 9th Anniversary, babe!) was a picture of this beautiful little girl:

And it's this dear friend of E and A that we're going to visit for dinner tonight! Both my little secret agents were thrilled with the surprise and continued to hide - and find - the cards the rest of the afternoon.

Each Peach Pear Plum by Allan Ahlberg

So it's not a secret agent book (I told you I was having a hard time finding spy picture books), but it is an I-Spy and a classic. "Each peach pear plum, I spy Tom Thumb." And so will your child as they flip through each page of this simple and engaging I-Spy book. Hidden in each nursery-rhyme-themed picture is a character from another nursery rhyme. The book hops from one nursery rhyme to another until the last page where all the characters converge for a picnic of plum pie.

The lines on each page are short enough to engage older babies and are also perfect for beginning readers. This was one of the first books E ever read aloud to me! We own my husband's childhood copy, but its falling apart from constant use so we'll probably have to get one of our own soon.

I'm linking up to:
- Feed Me Books Friday @ Little Sprout Books
- ABC & 123's Show & Tell

More Secret Coding Fun

Secret Agent Mom here, with another mission: teach Secret Agent E the basics in cryptology! First up: the Winding Code. You'll need a pencil, pen, tape, and a strip of paper.

Tape the end of the paper at a slant onto the pencil. Wind the paper around the pencil, then write your message across the paper.

Unravel and give to your partner.

Yep. It looks like gibberish. That is, until you wrap it back around a pencil!

Now it's all clear! "You're the best!"

Next, we'll create our own Code Snake! You'll need two colored strips of paper 3/4" x 18" (I glued construction paper strips together to make them long enough), and a pen. Fold your paper together accordion style.

Write the alphabet on one color and numbers (or symbols if you're feeling adventurous) on the other.

To encode your message, look for the letter you need.

And write down the number instead! You can decode the same way.

Keep this in your secret agent kit, along with a wax crayon for invisible messages. Just write your message out on a piece of paper. (We saved our crayon from our Easter egg dying kit.) Then use a little water and finger paints to reveal the secret message!

Special Agent E, you ARE a great secret agent!

All of these activities can be found in:

Usborne Book of Secret Codes by Diana Riddel
This book has it all, including the pigpen cypher we did yesterday. The pages are full-color, graphic-style and explain codes and ciphers in simple terms. The back of the book contains a fun game older children will enjoy playing, and I think could easily be adapted for a secret agent-themed birthday party. It's not for small children, but I think it'd make a great addition to your library. Use it now to introduce codes and let your kids enjoy it years later on their own!

Codes for Kids

Every secret agent needs to be able to decipher secret messages. To continue with our theme this week, I created this simple cipher for E to decode. There are plenty of kid-friendly codes you can use, but my favorite is the Pigpen Cipher. Possibly originating during the Crusades, it was used by masons in the 18th century and Confederates during the Civil War. Letters are written in a grid, and each letter is represented by the lines and dots within its portion of the grid.

I wrote the key at the top of the page and then wrote my message underneath, in this case the name of E's friend who was coming for a (surprise) playdate today.

It took a couple examples, but I was surprised how quickly E caught on. She looked at the shape and then tried to find the letter that was surrounded by the shape.

In no time, she'd solved the puzzle and was obviously thrilled with the surprise message.

Codes and Ciphers by Sean Callery

This isn't a kids book, but it's worth having in your library if you are at all interested in the subject. The book covers historic codes and ciphers through the ages, giving their history and how to solve them. I know, it seems unbelievably nerdy, but if you at all enjoyed The Davinci Code or National Treasure, then you deserve to give this book a chance.

Alphabet Secret Agent

Our theme this week is Secret Agents! This afternoon, Special Agent E received this important message:

(Forgive me the hat... I didn't have a fedora.) E was thrilled to receive her own special assignment and spent over an hour running around the house and yard looking for objects beginning with each letter of the alphabet. I gave her an old iphone to take the pictures, which thrilled her even more. Halfway through, she asked to see our children's dictionary to help her come up with ideas for different letters. I was impressed with everything she was able to find! (A is for "animal," btw.)

When she'd finished her mission, she received two thumbs up from her handler! What more could a secret agent want? :)

Agent A To Agent Z by Andy Rash

It is not easy finding picture books about special agents, so I was excited to find this one. Agent A is given the mission: find the agent who's unofficial, the one not using words with his initial. He goes through the alphabet of agents, each doing secret-agent-y things starting with his particular letter. All of them pan out... all, except Agent A that is!

The illustrations are cartoony, using dark colors that I think would particularly appeal to little boys. While this is an ABC book, it's larger vocabulary is not geared toward toddlers, and I'd recommend it for older preschool and up.


I'm linking up to:
- Milk N' Honey's Monday Shareday
- ABC & 123's Show & Tell 
- Nurture Store's Play Academy 
- We Play @ Childhood 101