SHOW YOUR LOVE ON FEB 14TH! That is the sentence students will be saying in order to Crack the February Code. Before students can say that sentence out loud, they must successfully make it through six challenges as a team! Included are options for students 1st through 5th grade to play. You can differentiate between grade levels to find the perfect level clue card for each team! Here is a close up look at what those challenges consist of!
To start, each team will receive the beginning clue card from the teacher. This lets the students know how the February Crack the Code will be played. Students will read through the beginning clue card as a team, and they will learn that throughout the activity they will be collecting hearts with words on them. Those hearts will be earned for successfully completing each of the clue cards. I suggest giving each team a zip-lock bag to keep their small cards together throughout the activity without loosing any. Remember, every part of a Crack the Code Challenge is intended to help foster student independence. Students “keeping track of their cards without loosing them” is something you will have to teach them, and giving them a zip-lock bag to keep them together is a great strategy for them to use. Keeping track of heart pieces may be challenging for 1st graders, so their version has a coloring sheet in which students will color in the heart that corresponds with their clue card (again this takes places after the successful completion of each clue card). After they read the beginning clue card they will be ready to head off and find Clue Card #1.
For Clue #1 students will be solving a Tangram style heart shaped puzzle. The puzzle comes with 2 templates to make it more challenging/easier.
For Clue #2 students will be using a secret decoder to discover the hidden heart word YOUR. This challenge is fun for students as they typically have never seen a decoder quite like this before! For 1st and 2nd graders I suggest helping them put the decoder together, or having the decoder already prepared for them to use.
Clue #3 will have students working on a STEM challenge! For this challenge students must build a castle/tower for the Queen of Hearts! Their tower should have at least two levels, and stand for one minute without falling. This task is a lot of fun while also very challenging!
This next challenge is one of my favorites! Clue #4 will force students to turn ON their brain. Each of the brain teasers included uses the word ON which is the hidden heart word for this clue card. There are two levels for this clue so you can make it harder/easier when needed.
Clue #5 will ask students to do some close reading about the History of Valentine’s Day. The reading passage comes in multiple levels so each student can feel successful reading. Students will then need to answer three questions about the text in order to unlock the “lock” with the three secret letters (FEB).
The final challenge awaits! For Clue #6 upper elementary students will begin by picking a number of their choice. Then they will go through a series of steps listed on the clue card (such as doubling their original number, then adding 12 to it etc.) They will eventually realize that no matter what number they started with, all students end up with a sum of 14. Once they complete this challenge they will earn their last “heart word.” The students will then put the words together in order to form the sentence SHOW YOUR LOVE ON FEB 14TH. At this point students will have officially CRACKED THE CODE!
I hope your students have a wonderful time solving the February Crack the Code! Remember you can save BIG by grabbing the Crack the Code GROWING BUNDLE which has a Crack the Code for every month (grades 1-5) plus more!!! Here are some amazing reviews from other teachers who have completed this fun activity with their students!
