Secret Spy Workshop Review

Mr K’s vivid imagination takes him from being an astronauts to superheroes but a couple of roles that he often reprises is a ninja and a spy. He is always very keen to learn spy’s tricks of the trade.

Secret Spy workshop from Interplay is a DIY kit to teach children the brain boggling science magic tricks.

The contents include:

• Big and small mirrors
• Scenery insert
• Die-cut sheets
• Double sided sticky tape
• Plastic beads
• Bendy mirror
• Tracing paper
• Plastic box
• EVA foam
• Grids card
• Colour instruction manual

There are four different activities to do with your child: build your own super snooper scope; the black hole money box; ocean deep treasure chest and making your own anamorphic spy code.

Mr K was slightly disappointed as he thought that this is a spy kit but in fact, there is only the super snooper scope and the anamorphic spy code that could be used in the art of spying. The rest are more like magic tricks and how science works. I think he would much prefer if the kit taught him how to rewrite a secret code that no one knew how read it or making his own glasses with mirrors attach so he could see what was happening behind him.

To build the super snooper scope is very straightforward. Everything is provided in the kit and all you need to do is to assemble it. It is made from thin cupboard which is able to slide easily to snoop over bushes or around corners. Ms C and Mr K loves this and snooping around the house with it!

Next we built the black hole money box. Again everything is included and it is easy to assemble. Now they could practise this magic trick to trick their friends. Also you could swap the scenes by cutting out the undersea scene or the other DIY scene.

Finally, we tried the anamorphic spy code activities. This requires precise drawing and a bit of math. Mr K was not able to do it nicely and required plenty of explanation. There are four sheets of tracing paper provided. Once the picture is drawn, trace it on the code and see how the picture turns out. Overall, this is more like a good science kit than a secret spy kit.

Disclosure: We received the sample for the purposes of writing this review, however, all thoughts and opinions remain our own.