How Animals Use Colour: Camouflage

The last two Mondays the children have been exploring camouflage.

Hidden Snakes and Mapping (April 30)

The children spend time every day in the forest and are familiar with the landmarks. As we walk through the forest I listened as the children named their landmarks.

Simone: “That is where the bees live” pointing to a large hollow stump

Finn: “There’s the first castle,” pointing to a broad leaf maple with two trunks that had grown together forming a gnarled base.

Taiyo: “There are three rainbows along this path” each one he pointed to was a vine maple that was arching over the path.

At the meadow we split into two groups. Again, we oriented ourselves but this time we drew out our map.  First we drew the main trail, then the short side trail that takes us into a wilder area, where I had hidden toy snakes.

When we got to the spot we added some trees, logs and rocks to the map. I told them that there were many (toy) snakes hiding in the forest and we were going to search for them. However, they do not want to be found.

We talked a little about how an animal might hide in the forest.

“Dig a hole and hide inside”

“Hide under a log”

“Blend in”

“Run away”

“Climb up a tree”

We then talked about what colours you might want to be if you wanted to blend in.

Augustine and Jake both wanted to be brown

Travis wanted to be green

Finn wanted to be black

Elana wanted to be pink

As the children searched for the snakes they noticed that the brighter coloured ones were easier to find and the darker ones were harder. They also noticed that the green ones that were on the bown earth were easier to spot but when in the green ferns they were harder to find.

Once all the snakes had been found the children re-hid the snakes, marking the hiding spot on the map, for the second group of children.

While waiting in the meadow the second group found a living camouflaged creature.

Deer Blankets (May 7)

Once in the forest some of the children turned into baby deer while others became hungry predators. I explained that like last week this was a hiding game but instead of snakes it would be baby deer. Like the snakes the baby deer would blend in.

I explained to them that to hide all the baby deer needed to do was to lay on the ground.

We talked about what would help the baby deer hide?

“They are brown”

“They have spots”

 A child’s brown hoodie blended even without the spots but some children had brighter jackets, so to be more like baby deer I brought deer blankets to help us hide.

The hungry predators (wolves, coyotes, pumas, lions, fox and even a tiger) would search for the baby deer. While the hungry predators closed their eyes and counted the baby deer hid in the forest.

We tried this both in the forest and along the greener path.