Valentine’s Day Codes

Teach your students about basic cryptography and code making.

Words Within Words: Chocolate

How many words can you find within Chocolate?

Word Ladder: Fly to Bee (6-steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Words Within Words: PATRICK

How many words can you find within Patrick?

Words Within Words: RAINBOW

How many words can you find within rainbow?

Words Within Words: LATKES

How many words can you find within LATKES?

Words Within Words: COBWEB

How many words can you find within COBWEB?

Words Within Words: SCARECROW

How many words can you find within “scarecrow”?

Words Within Words: CRANBERRY

How many words can you find within “cranberry”?

Words Within Words: STUFFING

How many words are hiding inside STUFFING? More than you think.

Path Cipher (Codes Part 4)

Now let’s try the Path Cipher – a cipher that mixes things up even more than Zig Zag did.

Zig Zag Cipher (Codes Part 3)

Let’s try a cipher that doesn’t substitute new letters or shapes. We just mix things up.

Pig Pen Cipher (Codes Part 2)

Let’s encode some secret messages with a cipher that was actually used during the American Civil War!

Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)

Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!

Words Within Words: GENERAL

How many words can you find within “general”?

Words Within Words: Intro (SOLDIER)

How many words can you find within SOLDIER? 20? 35? 50? Even more!?

Words Within Words: TEACHER

How many words can you find within TEACHER?

Words Within Words: PARKING

How many words can you find within PARKING?

Words Within Words: TROMBONE

How many words can you find within TROMBONE?

Analyze Suffixes: -ly, -less, and -ful

What exactly does adding -less do to a word?

Words Within Words: AIRPLANE

How many words can you find within airplane?

Words Within Words: LEOPARD

How many words can you find within “leopard”?

Word Pyramid: P to PLAINS

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Word Pyramid: I to LIONS

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Word Pyramid: H to CRASH

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Word Ladder: Work to Hard (4 Steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder – Cold to Cool (5-Steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder: Fast to Race (4 step)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder: Kid to Old (5-steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder: Sky to Red (5-steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder: Band to Sing (4 Steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder: Foot to Shoe (4 Steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Word Ladder: Fire to Warm (4 Steps)

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Jotto

Who can guess the codeword first?

Word Ladders Introduction

You won’t believe how this spelling and vocabulary puzzle will get kids’ brains sweating over the smallest of words.

Ghost

Ghost is a word-building game for two players. The first person to create an actual word loses.

Words Within Words: NUTCRACKER

How many words can you find within NUTCRACKER?