Secret Messages

The teddy bears were trying to think of a game they could play but wanted to try something new. "I know," said Scary. "How about we try writing secret messages?"

"How do we play that?" they all asked. "I'll show you," said Scary. "There are lots of different ways, but let's try this one first."

Scary found some wooden lolly sticks. You can either wait until you have all eaten enough lollies, and then wash them, or you can buy them from craft shops, ready to use. The bears liked the idea of eating all the lollies, but bears have very little patience when they've got an idea in their heads, so that would have taken much too long, and luckily they had some lolly sticks in their craft box.

Then Scary searched for a marker pen, and a pencil - he was going to try using them both to see which worked best for his secret message.

The bears were all very intrigued. What would Scary do next? He said he had thought of a very easy message for them to practise on first.

He lined up some lolly sticks flat on the table, vertically (that means the long sides run top to bottom - like in the pictures), all pushed up against each other, with no gaps.

Then Scary told the other bears to look away while he wrote the message down. Using the lolly sticks as if they were a piece of paper, he wrote the letters of the message across the joins of the lolly sticks so that when they were split apart again and shuffled around, there were bits of letters on each stick.

He then gave the sticks to Custard to see if he could put them back together again in the right order, so that the message could be read.

Initially, it took Custard a while to decide where each stick needed to be placed so that the words could be read. He tried the sticks in different places, until some letters became clearer.

Then he managed to place the other sticks so that the message made sense. Luckily, it was a very short message. It said "Hello". Custard was very pleased!

Then Teddy wanted a go, so Scary wrote out another message without anyone looking, mixed up the sticks again and then passed them to Teddy.

This was a slightly longer message, with several lines of words, but, actually, once one line was correct, then all the others were too!

Teddy eventually got the sticks in the right order, and read out "My name is Teddy"!

Then Scary suggested a game they could all play with their secret messages. He hid a box of sweeties in the garden, then he wrote its location on the lolly sticks.

Instead of jumbling them up and letting the other bears work out the message straight away, he went outside and hid all the lolly sticks all over the garden.

So the bears' first job was to all run outside into the garden looking for them. One was in a flower bed, another in a plant pot, and another hidden in a bush.

It kept them occupied for quite some time but eventually they found them all and laid them on the table and started to work out the message.

It seemed to be a much harder message than either of the other two, until Scary confessed that he had made it more difficult by writing the first part of the message on one side of the sticks, and then turning them over and writing the second part on the other side!! So the bears had to get them in the right order to read the first part of the message first.

They all joined in (except for Scary of course!) It seemed to take ages, but eventually they had the first part sorted. It very intriguingly said "The treasure is under" - and that's all! "Under where?" they all cried.

"You'll have to turn the sticks over and work out the message which tells you where" Scary said. "That's easy," said Boo. "We'll just turn the sticks over, and the location will be right in front of us," he said.

Unfortunately, Scary had been a little bit more sneaky than that. When they turned the sticks over - they made no sense at all!! Scary had moved them all about, before writing the second part of his message. Oh, Scary - how annoying!!!

They were able to work out the second part quite quickly though, so they weren't really very cross! It turned out that the treasure would be found under the lilac tree so they all rushed outside again and found a big tin of sweeties to share! Yummy!!

You could try this way of writing secret messages to each other. If anyone else finds your lolly sticks, they won't know that there is a message on them. But you will be able to figure it out! Have fun!