Hide and Seek With Camouflaged Animals
Elinor and her friends have trouble hiding from the goat twins while playing hide and seek. Then, they observe animals in nature that seem to hide easily because their coloring matches their surroundings. Ari finds a brown bird that blends into the branches of a tree, and Elinor discovers a green insect that looks like a leaf. Through observations, they learn that some animals use camouflage to match their surroundings so that they can blend in, protect themselves from danger, and trick their prey.
Help your child learn about camouflage by creating paper plate animal faces in different colors, patterns, and types. Then play your own game of camouflage hide and seek together to notice how your crafted animals blend in.
Materials
Directions
Let’s Be Curious! Ask your child about their favorite animals. Do any of them look similar to their environment? Invite your child to a game of camouflage hide and seek to learn how some animals hide themselves.
Let’s Make a Plan! Decide on 3 to 5 different animals to make. For example, consider creating insects, birds and frogs. If you need help finding animals that use camouflage, research online together.
Using the paper plates and your craft supplies, create an animal face for each animal. Look at pictures of the animals for inspiration and focus on their colors and patterns.
Let’s Explore! Discuss the difference between good hiding spots — those that allow the animals to blend in — versus bad hiding spots — those that make the animals stand out in. Then, hide the animals for your child, focusing on colors and patterns instead of positioning the animals near or far, high or low.
Hide the animals and then let your child find them.
Let’s Share! Talk with your child about what they noticed about finding the animals you made. Help your child draw and write about what you noticed on your observation chart. Ask your child, “Were some animals easier to find than others?”
Explore Further
Challenge your child to find three different outfits to represent different animals for a game of hide and seek. For example, your child could wear a brown shirt to dress as a bear or a yellow shirt to dress like a lion. Instead of hiding the paper plate animals, have your child practice blending into different hiding places. Switch roles and have your child find you in new outfits and new places. What did you learn together about camouflage?
Continue exploring camouflage activities for kids with "Elinor Wonders Why" by playing the Hide and Seek game with your child.
We hope you had fun together! Snap a photo of you and your child doing the activity and share it with us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. We’d love to see how it turned out!
Want more “Elinor Wonders Why” activities? Check out the Falling for Fun: Drop and Investigate experiment and the Observe With a DIY Magnifying Glass activity to continue the fun!
Author: 
Science