'stop. Password please.''Baked Beans.' 'Enter. Welcome to Spy Academy.'
Children love mystery and adventure, so anything connected with spying and detectives will prove to be a huge hit in any out-of-school club.
'I play this in the playground every day at school now.'
'I leave code signs for my friends to know if I'm allowed out or not.'
'Jenny and I track each other on the field at school and everybody wants to know how to do it,' are just a few comments we had after our last Spy Academy.
MISSIONS AND ICEBREAKERS
A notice on the door asking for the password helps children feel as though they are entering a real spy academy when they arrive. The notice might read, 'The password is any food that comes in a can,' so baked beans, tuna, or peaches would all be correct. Alternatively, it might read, 'The last bit of name for the bear with very little brain (rhymes with shoe).' Of course the password is 'Pooh' - which gets even the shyest spies giggling.
A mission to seek information gets children talking to each other. Send them to ask the name of anybody with blue socks, to shake hands with three people they don't know, or to find out who likes cabbage.
Children love announcing 'Mission accomplished!' before going off on the next mission.
SECRET IDENTITIES
After this, children can create a new identity for themselves complete with name, address, and a picture diagram with clothes, hair colour, glasses, moustaches and so on.
A group of nine- to 12-year-olds, who did this, invented a game where somebody read out all the different identities in turn while everybody guessed who they really were.
'I'm Charlie MacFiddle, I work in Kentucky Fried Chicken because I am trying to find out what the secret recipe is,' - John.
'You think I'm just Paul D at the after-school club but I'm really Sylvester Slime, Master Criminal of the underworld,' - everybody guessed this one!
This leads on to making fake ID cards using thick card cut into credit card size rectangles covered with sticky-backed plastic.
SPY JUNK
Some children enjoy making spy gadgets. Secret message holders can be made from dry felt-tipped pens with the insides removed, or fresh teabags with the tea emptied out, taped inside a sock, shoe or hat. A magazine with a small rectangle cut out becomes a good observation gadget. A cereal packet or box can be decorated to look like a book.
Disguises like fake moustaches, beards, false noses, bald heads, glasses and wigs can be made from papier-mache, cotton wool, wool and paints.
Later, when their creations are dry children can use the dressing up box to disguise themselves completely.
CODES
Your spies can write messages in invisible ink using lemon juice. Pressing the paper with a warm iron - with playworker supervision - will make the writing visible. Code messages can be written using the semaphore alphabet and stick people. Children can create secret codes to use with a friend.
Distribute photocopies of the Morse code and ask children to think of creative ways to use it. Ahmed and Paul at my playscheme used a ball with a small bounce for a dot and a higher bounce to signify a dash.
OUTDOORS
There are some fantastic outdoor games that are ideal for Spy Academy. Show children how to tie threads to bushes, drop clues and arrange twigs, leaves or stones to signify a message - an arrow pointing in a certain direction or a no entry sign. Then divide the children and playworkers into two groups. The first group has a ten-minute start and has to go on a walk to find somewhere suitable to wait, leaving clues and signs as they go. The second group has the task of tracking and finding them. Then the two teams swap over.
Catch the Flag is another team game. Two teams each make a camp, and set similar size boundaries. Each team has a flag or trophy in their camp, clearly visible to the opposing team. Defenders have to prevent this from being taken. Scouts try to catch the other team members and get their flag or trophy. If somebody is within the opposing team's camp when tagged they are captured and can only be released if a member of their own team manages to tag them. The winning team is the first to take the opponent's flag.
Manhunt is a simpler version, where two people are catchers and start at base. The other children hide nearby (in small groups with vigilant playworkers watching). The children try to return to base without being tagged by the catchers. Those that are tagged have to help catch the others.
This is an incredibly popular game as shown by the answers given by a group of older children when asked to write down activities they wanted to do one day: 'Manhunt; Manhunt; Manhunt; Manhunt; Manhunt' - and so on down the page.
'It is fun and exciting and funny all at the same time,' Davey said when I asked why he liked it so much.
'I just love running and hiding and being chased,' was Callie's answer.
Another outdoor activity is inventing good hidey-holes for secret messages.
Groups of friends try to send and collect them without others discovering where they are hidden. Good places are empty bottles or crisp packets that look like litter (children use junk and clear up afterwards), holes in trees, cracks in walls or taping them behind fence-posts or signs.
SPY GAMES
After all these training sessions it is time for an interrogation test to see who is fit to become a spy.
Groups of four to six children concoct a fictional story about their activities together the previous evening. Everybody sits in a circle and each group is interrogated in turn, one child at a time going to sit in the middle to explain their movements. As each subsequent member of the team describes their actions, everybody asks questions and spots the discrepancies.
Budding spy Kyle noticed a major flaw in one story, 'You said you went to the toilet at nine o'clock but Sarah said she was there at nine o' clock and Jen said she went to wash her hands then, but you all said you were there alone!'
Finally, everyone votes on whether the team pass and become spies, or fail, and remain as civilians.
Another good game for the Spy Academy theme includes Murder in the Dark.
The room needs to be as dark as possible. Children draw lots and 'X'
indicates who the 'murderer' is. Players lie face down and the 'murderer'
quietly gets up and selects his victim, squeezing the back of their neck gently. The victim yells and the murderer returns to his place. The play leader asks everybody to sit up (except the victim). Everybody has one chance to guess the 'murderer's' identity.
ESCAPE
This game also needs a darkened room, obstacles for the children to hide behind, a torch and a boundary line. The leader stands behind the boundary and uses the torch to search for escapees who crawl across the room and over the boundary without being seen. If the torch rests on anyone who is moving, they are 'captured' and are then out of the game.
In the 'Observation' game two children are chosen and the others have to inspect them before they go off to another room. There they change something about themselves. They might swap shoes with each other, take their watch off or alter their hairstyle. When they return to the group, everybody has to guess what has changed.
SPY ACADEMY FINALE
To finish the session or the week, it is fun to have an award ceremony where Spy Academy certificates are issued to everyone attending. Special certificates or prizes are given for tracking and trailing, code work, interrogation, best disguise, cleverest junk gadget and most sinister identity.
Finally, all the children march together and salute the spy chief in a grand passing out parade.
There are only two drawbacks to running Spy Academy. The first is that children do not want the day to end, and the second is that they want it to run again, and again, and again. As eight-year-old Brendan says, 'I just know I'm going to be a detective or spy when I'm a grown up and when I join I've got proof that I've done training!'
