We were reading a really fun novel called Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation recently. In the book, Charlie has to decode messages that Einstein left. My kids were really interested in learning about ciphers and encryption. We talked about some really basic ways to do encryption, like shift cyphers. I even got out one of my college textbooks to show them how complicated they can get. My son got so into it he wrote me some messages using a basic shift cypher. For fun, I made a little program that "encodes" letters into colored circles. They have had fun playing with it.
Now on to the technical stuff...
This repo includes a python script that generates tiles of colored circles from text. Each letter is mapped to a unique color. I used streamlit to make a basic UI to use the algorithm to generate the "encrypted" message. The app is hosted on the Streamlit Community Cloud. Here is a link to the app. https://mrjones5-text-to-circles-text-to-circle-678h7a.streamlit.app
If you are intersted in reading Charlie Thorne, you can find out more info here: https://stuartgibbs.com/books-2/charlie-thorne-and-the-last-equation/. It really is a fun book. Charlie is a pre-teen girl math whiz and she is super cool.