Camouflaged Creatures

Camouflaged Creatures Organiser’s Card About the activity This activity is designed to get children thinking about trees, and the life that trees support, and begin to be aware of the differences between trees. The children have been asked to look at camouflage. Corina isn’t sure how animals manage to do it. Through this activity you will support your group to: • Think about the different types of camouflage that animals use • Test different camouflage patterns against different backgrounds • Present their findings to the rest of the group Kit list For each group: • Butterfly shapes cut out of brown or grey paper (sugar paper or wrapping paper is fine) • 15 cm pieces of white string or pipe cleaners • Crayons, pencils and/or felt tip pens, scissors, Blu-Tack Objects to ‘hide’: • A piece of brightly coloured wool or pipe cleaner • Plastic animals in their natural colours • Something cut out of a magazine page – their choice • A square white sheet of paper (6 cm x 6 cm approx) and some patterned wrapping paper. You or the children can add other objects. What to do 1. Introduce the activity using the email. 2. Give out activity cards to the children. You could show a couple of pictures of camouflaged creatures. 3. Explain that they will be exploring how animals use camouflage. Give the children the brown/grey butterfly shape and the piece of string. Give them time to discuss and explore camouflage by trying to work out how they might ‘hide’ the butterflies. 4. Encourage children to discuss their ideas and how to carry out their investigations. 5. Support children to conduct their investigation and make their own records of their results. Now the children can have the set of objects. You will need to tell the children that one of the camouflage challenges is to hide the white piece of paper on top of the wrapping paper. After they have played the game allow time to talk about which things were the hardest to see and why. 6. Ask the children to present their findings to the rest of the group, they can be as creative in their presentation as they want.

Things to think about Remind the children that the challenge is NOT about hiding objects underneath things. Let them choose how to ‘hide’ the objects even if you think that there are better ways of doing it. Children may want to cut the white square of paper into an irregular shape as well as colouring it. The children may realise that not having a straight edge is helpful. Keywords • Animals • Camouflage • Patterns Watch out! There are few safety issues in this activity apart from stopping children climbing to ‘hide’ their objects. Find out more Animals, such as big cats, have spots or stripes to blend with their surroundings. Zebras’ stripes make it difficult for a predator to know where one animal ends and the other begins. Polar bears and other animals that spend a lot of time in snow often have fur to match. Some animals even have a brown coat for summer and a white coat for winter (e.g. stoat). Some animals have special skin that can change colour. Chameleons are the most famous of these. Other animals, such as stick insects, leaf insects and some moths, are shaped like twigs or leaves. Female animals are sometimes better camouflaged than the males (e.g. pheasant). This is so that they are not seen when sitting on the nest or looking after young. British Science Association Registered Charity No. 212479 and SC039236