Secret Messages

This is a quick, easy and fun activity. We first did it a couple of years ago and we revisited it this week. All you need is a white wax crayon, white sheet of paper and paint. If you happen to have water colour paint great, if not just water down some poster paint / kids washable paint.

For this activity this week I prepared it first so my children didn’t know what to expect (they don’t remember the last time we did it). First, write a secret message using the white crayon on the white paper. Lean quite heavily on the page. Next, water down the paint if you don’t have watercolours.

Once I was ready I called the kids over. I asked them could they see anything on the page. Be careful not to hold it to the light too much or they might see a bit! They told me there was nothing on it and I said there was a secret message to be revealed. I grabbed a paintbrush and gently painted over the page. They were fascinated and L read the message as it was revealed.

The message I chose this week was ‘Stop doubting and Believe’ as it ties in with the Sunday School lesson for this coming Sunday in our church. My friend Karen who runs Scriptural Grace has been preparing a lesson on the story of Doubting Thomas in the Bible and we decided to collaborate! Check out the lesson in the Free Resource Library on her site here. She has included the story about Doubting Thomas, a fun video and some puzzles too! I used the secret message to teach my children a little about faith, reminding them that just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

If you have younger children you could simply draw a heart shape on the paper and then reveal it using the paint and tell them about how much God loves them.

After we had revealed our secret message the kids got busy using the crayon to write and draw their own messages and pictures and then reveal them.

And, in case you have a child like mine who wants to know why it works you can explain that the wax in the crayon isn’t water soluble / cannot dissolve in water so therefore it pushes the watery paint away and is not covered by the paint.

By the way, we also tried revealing secret messages using lemon juice and a hairdryer but these were not so successful! In case you want to give it a go simply squeeze the juice out of a lemon, dip your brush in, write your message on a white sheet of paper and then use a hair dryer over it to reveal the message – perhaps you will have more success than we did!