Homemade Spy Gear

Kids love to pretend they're spies or special agents, catching the bad guys and solving clues is great fun with homemade spy gear......


While spy gear can be a little expensive to buy in stores, it's possible to can keep your children amused for hours by making your own homemade spy gear.



Invisible Ink
Secret spy messages need to be guarded from prying eyes. You can make your own invisible ink to hide your secret messages quickly and easily.


Cut a lemon in half and squeeze the juice into a small cup. You'll need to use a fine-pointed paint brush to write out your secret message. For the best results, try to use recycled paper as this seems to work the best for keeping secret messages safe.


When your invisible ink message has dried, write something else on the paper so no one will suspect there's a hidden message on there.


For someone to read your hidden message, you'll need to heat up the paper a little. Heat makes the lemon juice turn brown, so you'll need to carefully heat up the paper. You could hold it above a candle flame, making sure you hold it far enough away so the paper doesn't burn. Whatever you wrote will show up as brown writing on the paper.



Book Safe
Spy kids need somewhere to hide their treasures. There's no better place to hide things that out in plain sight. Nobody would ever think of looking inside a book on your bookshelf for your important things, so a book could be the ideal safe.


You'll need to find a big, thick book with a hard cover. There are plenty of old books in thrift shops that nobody would mind if you cut out to make your safe, or you can ask a relative if they have something that might suit what you need.


Open the book to page 15 and lay the cover flat. Use a pencil and a ruler to draw a line along the side of the page about an inch away from the edge. Draw another line along the top of the page, also about an inch away from the edge, and another one along the bottom. Complete your rectangle with another line about an inch away from where the page is bound into the cover.


Ask an adult to help you cut deeply along the edges of your rectangle so the knife goes through several pages at a time. You can remove as many pages as you need, but if you keep the rectangle to about 1 inch deep then you'll be able to store your small valuable items inside the book while it's closed and nobody will think to open the book to find your things.

 

Spy Periscope
Any good spy should always check that the coast is clear before entering rooms. A periscope could be the perfect spy tool for your spy kit to help make sure you know what's around the corner. You can also use your periscope to see over fences.


To make your own periscope you'll need a cardboard mailing tube. Cut a two inch square into one end of the tube and then cut a two inch diagonal slit at every corner of the square.


One the other end of the tube, cut another two inch square, making sure you cut the opposite side of the mailing tube, also cutting two inch diagonal slits into every corner of the square. Mount a small mirror onto a cardboard square with some sturdy glue and then insert the mirror into the slits at the top of the mailing tube. Remember your top mirror should be inserted into the slits with the mirror facing down towards the bottom cut.


Mount another small mirror onto another cardboard square for the bottom slits. You need to make sure the mirrors are facing each other. Seal the ends of your tube with some duct tape so no light gets into your mirrors and remember to use your periscope to check that the coast is clear before entering a room!

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We hope you have lots of fun with your homemade spy gear. If you have other homemade spy gear suggestions, feel free to leave us a comment. We'd love to hear your suggestions. Please post about your homemade spy gear and other projects here