Hobbies And Interests
Secret Hiding Place
Spies always have important information or things to hide. One gadget that can be used as a secret hiding place is a small vault designed to look like a book. Parents can create gadgets like this one for their kids using an old and unused hard cover book. The book should be thick enough to accommodate children's small toys.
On the 30th page of the book, draw a rectangle with its sides about 1 inch away from the edges of the book. Use a sharp cutter to slice through the rectangle and take out the pages of the book, but make sure to leave about 20 to 30 pages at the end. The book can now serve as a hiding place. Parents can glue the remaining pages to make it more durable. A cloth or plastic material can also be trimmed on the edges of the book's hollow area.
Fingerprint Powder
In spy movies or crime TV shows, fingerprint tools always seem to play a factor in solving crimes or learning someone's identity. A homemade version of this fingerprint tool can be made using soot, starch powder and clear tape. Soot can be collected from a cooking grill or a fireplace, but if these are not available, manufacture soot by holding a saucer or a dish above a lighted candle. Mix an equal amount of the starch powder and the collected soot. Kids can use this mixture to reveal fingerprints and then apply a clear tape to lift the prints. This one gets a bit messy, so it's best to use when parents know kids will be outside for a long period of time.
Periscope
Spies are good at observing other people without being noticed, and one tool that enables them to do this is a periscope. A periscope can be manufactured at home using carton rolls of tissue paper and mirrors. Use tape to join about three or four carton rolls and create a tube. Cut two small squares on both ends of the tube. These squares should be facing each other, such that when the mirrors are placed diagonally on the hollow squares, one's reflection will be shown on the other. Small slots can be formed on the sides of the square to hold the mirror.
Wheel Codes
To be able to pass valuable information secretively, spies must use codes. Simple spy codes, such as alphabet wheel codes, can be designed for children to write messages to one another. Two alphabet wheels are drawn on a paper and then cut. One wheel is smaller than the other and has a small triangle or arrow. Children will decide on a letter located on the outer wheel that they will designate as the "key" character. The letters of the original message will be read from the inner wheel, and then encoded by pointing the arrow to the key and substituting the letters on the outer wheel corresponding to the letters of the message. Other children who do not know the key will not be able to decode the message.