Code Breaker Game

Most children love to crack a code and discover the secret message hidden within. Mine are no exception. Recently we had some fun with this Code Breaker Game which can be customised to your child's age and current obsessions.

This game provides lots of opportunities for literacy learning. Younger ones can practice recognising numbers and letters and writing letters. You can also start to show them how to decode and read words. Older children can practice reading and writing words. The older the child, the more sophisticated you can make the vocabulary in the message. The game worked well for both my four-year-old (with help from me) and my six-year-old.

I created this Code Breaker Game Sheet, which you can download here. Fill this sheet in with your own special message for your child to decode.

This is what you do.

1. Hide something for your child to find within your house or yard. This could be a snack or an object dear to their heart. The obsessions in our house at the moment are Superman and football, so I hid Superman's cape and a football.

2. Formulate the 'task' describing what your child needs to find and why. The tasks for my children were:

"Find Superman's cape so that he can fly away and save the city from destruction"; and

"The World Cup is about to start but the teams can't find the ball. Can you help them find it?"

Write the task into the box at the top of the Code Breaker Game sheet.

3. Write down a sentence which describes where the hidden object can be found on a separate sheet of paper. Encode this message into numbers using the Code Key on the left side of the Game Sheet, and write the numbers on the Game Sheet as shown below.

The message for my four-year old superman-obsessed son was "Under the table at the bottom of the garden". Here is the completed sheet:

My older football-obsessed son had to decode the following message: "Go into the room where your brother sleeps and look inside the big cupboard". Here is his completed sheet:

Black out a space between the words to make it clear to your child where one word ends and another starts. For younger children try to keep the message short so they don't lose patience while code breaking and give up.

4. Set your child code breaking.

5. They've cracked it!

Watch the delight on their face when they finally crack the code in the code breaker game, run to the hiding place and find the 'treasure'.

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If you liked this activity, you may also like:


Hide and Seek Reading Game




Fishing for Letters and Words




Alphabet Activities

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