Secret messages

I love anything a bit different to bring a bit of excitement to sessions and I saw this lovely idea on the Funky Phonics page. Louise was using a uv pen and light to make it interesting for reading word cards. If you are a Teacher or a TA reading this and teach phonics,  You can download her free word cards here. Just scroll down to the ‘Secret Spy’ words.

©funky phonics

How could this be used for ELSA?

I came up with these messages which you can download later on in this blog post.

What a fab way to give a message to a child. You would write anything you choose or draw something and the child has to shine the pen light on the writing or drawing to see what it says. A great way of raising self-esteem.

Messages could be anything you like but would be good to personalise:

• • You are awesome
  • I am so proud of you
  • You have tried so hard
  • You used a calming strategy!
  • You remembered your breathing
  • You recognised your triggers for anger

I found these pens on Amazon and ordered them right away to test out my idea. You can order by clicking the picture. They are a good price. Even though the pens are a different colour they are obviously all the same invisible ink.

Here is the result:

Another idea could be to ask them how they feel today and they can either write or draw with the invisible ink and then you have to look using the UV light.

For a more permanent ink just for you, not for the children then use a permanent marker which you can find here.  Just click the picture to take you to Amazon. You should be able to write on laminate with these. You could make a set of emotion cards with some laminated card and the child can find what they emotion word is by using the UV light. Makes things a bit more exciting.

You can even use these pens with some of your resources. I thought this would be good. Write a word in the box and the child has to draw the face. Or you could draw the face and the child has to write the emotion word in the box. You can find this resource by clicking this link. 

They would work well with the Emoji resources too. For example this one 

You can download the secret message cards here: Secret messages