Getting Ready
During the Revolutionary War it was important for Patriots in different places to send messages back and forth to each other without the British finding out. Because it was always possible that a messenger would be captured by the other side, military leaders used coded messages. Code could be written in many ways. Sometimes they used a decoding sheet with holes punched in special places or a pattern cut out. The person reading the message would put the decoding sheet over the message and read only what appeared in the holes or the cutout. They also used numbers that referred to a particular page, sentence, and word in a book. Only the people in on the secret knew which book the numbers referred to.

Activity
Develop your own secret code with friends and use it to send messages to one another.

Think More About It
See if you can figure out what this coded message says:

1 12 12   13 5 14   1 19 5   3 19 5 1 21 5 4   5 18 22 1 12

Click here for answer

Words to know: code, decode, messenger