Today at Target, I found an interesting activity book, which it claimed to offer kids spy tools to crack the codes and solve the mysteries.
The book is quite simple, only includes 18 pages. I guess kids will be fascinated by the decoder wheel at first glance and also magic-reveal pen. The idea of putting a puzzle book with cracking code sounds new. I even bought myself one just for fun.
For me, I just like the decoder part, which can be regarded as an activitity to increase math thinking, or even computer thinking. One thing can be improved is that if the decoder game book was a seires of graded reader books would be better. Therefore, kids could enhance their decoder skills at different levels.
It also reminds me another series of book, which I like much when I was young. A Case for You and the Tiger-Team, by an Austrian writer Thomas Brezina. In this series, I actually learnt a lot tips on codes and secret messages, and even wrote actual message in really tiny letters, hidden under the stamp on an envelope with my friends.
A decorder book can also teach kids without curriculum, which means by supporting kids as they build their own intellectual structures with materials, they're learning. This is the way how they build knowledge.
