Maths gets a bad reputation in some circles, with children labelling it “boring” and even parents feeling intimidated by maths, and not emphasising it’s importance as much as reading or other key skills.

To challenge this and show plenty of ways that maths can be fun, the Cool Maths for Cool Kids series, hosted at Peakle Pie, is gathering together a group of bloggers to share maths activities all month. We’re happy to be joining in and sharing this number codes activity with you today.

Using number codes is a fun way to get children enthusiastic about numbers, as they use them to write and send secret messages and you can make this activity as simple or as complex as you like – according to your child’s ability.

We’re sharing some free printables to help you get started. Once your kids get going with it, they might like to take it further and make up lots of different codes of their own.

Number code printables, a fun way to practice math skills, and use numbers to send secret messages.

The simplest way to make a number code is just to assign each letter of the alphabet to a number, like in the printable above. Using that key, you can then write and solve secret messages easily.

To download and print out the whole set of four number code pages, click here.

Here are all of the pages within the pack:

Number code key, and space to practice using it to write your own messages