Spy Party Help

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spy Party Dress Code

• Ask Party goers to dress in black and wear sunglasses.
• Call everyone by his/her code number (use the last 4 digits of the child’s phone number)
• Come up with an Organization name… “Robert International Spy School” (“RISS”)
• “Robert Bureau of Investigation” (“RBI”) or the “R-7” (If Robbie is turning 7)

Spy Party Invitations

• Try writing the invitations backward (read with a mirror).

• The birthday child could deliver the invites door-to-door (ring the bell then hide) so receiving the invite is more mysterious.

• Come up with an Organization name… “Robert International Spy School” (“RISS”) “Robert Bureau of Investigation” (“RBI”) or “R-7” (If Robbie is turning 7)

Spy Party Decorations

• Add chalked body outlines outside (on pavement/sidewalk) for an interesting touch

• Tape maps and different country flags to the wall.

• Print out the “foot prints” and stick them to the walls/ceiling with painter’s tape.

Bomb Prop

A “bomb” can be made out of a piece of plasticine with old wires sticking out of it and bits and pieces of metal stuck to the plasticine, then put in a box, stick in a flashlight, bike light, egg timer … anything.
Have the aim of your treasure hunt be the secret “diffuse the bomb” directions (use an oven timer/ alarm clock/ ipod to count down the time).

• Believe it or not the CIA has a kid’s page on their website that has Games (!)

Spy Academy

Put your guests through a Series of “Tests” to see if they are “Spy Material” …

• Physical tests (a-Obstacle course, b-relay races, c-balancing contests …)
• Fingerprinting tests – One way to do this is make a fingerprint on a smooth surface and then lightly brush on graphite dust (rub a pencil against sandpaper to create some graphite dust). Then lift the print with some scotchtape and place the tape on a piece of card.
• Observation tests – Show a set of objects ….then cover them and remove an object, then have the “spies” figure out which item was removed
• Have a volunteer (parent/ neighbor/friend) burst into the room and “steal” something and ask the surprised children to give correct eyewitness accounts (you could put them into 2 teams and the teams could battle it out)
• Decoding games -try close up pictures of objects printed on regular paper …or “eyeball benders also write things out in “code” and have the children translate them).

Treasure Hunt

Hunts are great fun for the children – Find the “stolen” lootbags/cake/pinata/formula/bomb diffusing instructions

Sneaky Ways to Write out Your Clues

• Make Invisible Ink (write in lemon juice or milk then warm the note and reveal it by placing over a warm toaster/candle …. carefully)

• Scramble the letters (if the first and last letter are not changed it is quite easy to unscramble…….For example: if teh fsrit and lsat lteter aer nto canhegd it si qitue esay ot usnrcmalbe..

• Cipher (make/use a cipher wheel)

• Rhyming clues “Stop to think…. You’ll find it under the __________” (sink)

• Eyeball benders (extreme close-up photographs of things)

• Pigpen Cipher and here is a sample pigpen message

• Use another language as code – Russian is a good one.

• Morse Code

• Code Stick/Scytale code (cut a long narrow strip of paper and wind it around a specific stick/broom handle then write the message across the wound paper and then unwind … revealing a long strip of paper with seemingly random numbers on it!)

• Write Backwards (use Mirror to decipher)

• Use Braille

• Put clues into ASL (American Sign Language) pictures

• Block Code (see printables section)

• Reverse Alphabet (A=Z, B=Y ….. and so on…)

• Try a semaphore (Read every 2nd or 3rd, 4th, 5th letter)

Decoder

You can create a cardboard cipher wheel with our Cipher wheel decoder. Make up a code language and fill in the wheel spaces, then pick the “key” letter/symbol and line it up with the letter A and then voila…. You have all the corresponding codes. Spin the wheels after you are done so that no one knows your code! Print out both copies (Cipher wheel 1 and 2) and glue to cardboard then cut out the circles. Connect the two wheels in the center with a brass fastener (cotter pin/brad/split pin) if you don’t have any of these fasteners simply stick a straight pin through the 2 circles and into a small eraser.

Spy Party Food

• An easy cake to make for a spy party is a “bomb cake” (round ball pan) iced black with a black licorice “fuse”.
• Serve juice and soda concoctions that are “Shaken not stirred” (Shirley temple style with cherries and lemon twists and paper umbrellas)
• Have food taste tests
• Fortune cookies can have new messages put into them (just replace the old messages carefully with tweezers)