Dodging Raindrops: Secret agents/spies birthday party

Guest blogger - my hubby who was the mastermind behind the party!

Yesterday, our 7yo had a "Secret Agent" themed birthday party. We had some fun creating activities for them. Before the party I created "C..... Spy Agency" official secret agent id badges for each of the kids. We grabbed/requested photos of the kids and I "photoshopped" (actually, GIMP-ed) a black fedora and black sunglasses on them, and then put these photos on badges made up with Visio, which also included their names, and specialty (e.g., "Weapons). They were given these to wear in pin-on badge holders as they arrived.

Once every boy had their "C....... (my son's name) Spy Agency" official secret agent id badge, the party started with announcing to the boys that we had received a video message from a notorious ruffian known as "The Squeakster". I showed them a video on the laptop that featured a closeup of C's favourite mouse puppet announcing that he, The Squeakster, the archenemy of the C..... Spy Agency, had deployed one of his top agents to ruin C's birthday party by stealing all his presents, punctuated with much evil, menacing laughter.

I then explained that it was up to them, our duly constituted band of recently deputized secret agents, to recover the lost merchandise and save the party. The only clue we had to go on was a confusing photograph that one of our agents had sent us over a secure channel. I then handed them the first in a serious of laminated 5x7 photos I had taken.

The photos are extreme closeups of something in the backyard or neighbourhood for them to identify and find. At each location they'd find a "dropbox" with another such photo, as well as some additional items that they would need to keep for subsequent sleuthing tasks.

Once they found the fifth and final location from the photos (and getting some good exercise running back and forth up and down the street), they arranged all their findings on a table. They now had in their possession:

· Brush, powder, specimen paper, and tape for a fingerprinting kit;

· Blank piece of paper (!);

· A coded message;

· A codewheel decoder;

· Walkie-talkies;

· Little bags of BBs/ammo (1 bag per child);

· Small notebook and pencil.

They took the coded message and the decoder wheel, and using the pencil and they took the coded message and the decoder wheel, and using the pencil and notebook, they decoded the message letter by letter. The decoded message said: "Cook the blank paper".

So they took the blank sheet of paper, which at least 1 young sleuth had by now concluded may contain a message in invisible ink, and with some adult help, went to the toaster oven that was conveniently preheated to 500F, and put the 'blank paper' inside.

30 seconds later we pulled it out and there was now a message clearly visible: "Go to the top of the stairs! Avoid the lasers!"

On the second floor of our house, Sheila had created a "laser trip wire" corridor using red yarn that the boys had to traverse.

At the other end were some drinking glasses on a table (evidence) and a box labelled "Secret Weapon". Crawling on their stomachs, or gingerly stepping, the boys tried to avoid the 'lasers'

and were allowed to retrieve just one item.

Once they were done, they reassembled downstairs at the dining room table with the evidence and the fingerprinting supplies and I instructed them in how to dust the glasses for bad guy fingerprints with the brushes, the powder (which was actually just pencil graphite I had shaved), and then use transparent tape to 'lift' the print and then tape it down to a white piece of paper (we had a set of "fingerprint specimen cards" from a kit).

After all the kids had a chance to try their hand at that, we went over with their lifted prints to the 'criminal database' to identify the culprit.

I had taken photos of 4 of C's stuffed animals, and created slides on the laptop for each one of "crooks". Each slide included:

· their (mugshot) photo,

· a criminal name ("Horrible Hammy", "The Squeakster", "Chippy the Chopper", and "Lamby aka Baaaad Beth"),

· a "fingerprint", and

· "last known whereabouts".

I had used a real thumbprint of my own for "Lamby" and put a series of very greasy fingerprints on the glassware that the kids had recovered from upstairs. One of the boys declared a clear fingerprint match (fortunately they weren't too picky about what constituted a clear match, since their evidence handling procedures were a bit sloppy!) and proceeded to Lamby's last known whereabouts: The Gazebo.

So off to the gazebo they ran where they encountered a 'blockade' of stacked plastic cups that would need to be dealt with using the "Secret Weapon" which they now opened.

It was an AirSoft automatic Uzi submachine gun! I supervised the use of this as each child had a chance to use up their 50 BB's (from the ammo pouches they had accumulated earlier from the dropboxes) to knock down the cups.

As you can imagine, they loved this! (We made sure safety glasses were worn by the shooters.) At this point the birthday presents were recovered, and "Lamby" was taken into custody!!!

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Other information about the party: