Hide and Seek Teacher Overview
I Spy A Buterfly!
Can you spot the butterfly?
You are on a mission that involves understanding why animals use camouflage to survive in nature! Your mission will have you reviewing or learning all about camouflage and the 4 basic types of camouflage. You will then be given a top secret assignment that involves you designing a camouflaged butterfly and placing it somewhere within Summit Elementary School. Then you will see how long your camouflaged butterfly survives without being seen or captured by a predator!
Sample Activity and Lesson Ideas
Activity 1
What Do You See? This lesson will help students become aware of how animals use their colors to their advantage. To introduce the lesson and get the students thinking about animal colors, you will read the familiar Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin.
The students will then decide if each color presented in the book is the actual color of the specific animal in real life. The students will then discuss in groups why an animal is a particular color. This will then lead them to understand that animals rely on their own color to survive.
Activity 2
Camouflage Field Book- This activity can be done with the whole class on a White Board or completed individually on a computer. With this activity you or the students click on the magnifying glass, read the information, and then discuss the type of environment and if each presented animal could survive in this environment and why.
Activity 3
I Want To Know: Animal Camouflage video - This activity can be done with the whole class on a White Board, or completed individually on a computer. With this activity the students watch the video to listen and look for the ways that animals use camouflage to survive.
Students are then grouped together to discuss the 4 types of Camouflage Cards and then match each card with one of the animal pictures.
The teacher then shows, or prints out, the Animal Camouflage Pictures and Information for Kids PDF on the computer/white board to discuss with the class and confirm the 4 basic types of animal camouflage. (Concealing Coloration-Blending, Disruptive Coloration-Patterns, Disguise, and Mimicry.
Activity 4
Camouflage Sorting - This is an independent activity where the students use the Camouflage Sorting Pictures to cut-out and paste on the correct boxes within the Camouflage Sorting Worksheet. This activity will confirm each student's understanding toward the 4 types of camouflage.
Activity 5
Camouflaged Confetti Cut-outs - The students sort out the hole-punched confetti into different piles according to their color (black, yellow, grey, brown). Then they are dispersed in a selected area, outside or inside, and collected by the students to count again to identify which color was easier to find. (See Lesson Plans and Recording Sheet) Lesson Plans (PDF) Recording Sheet (PDF)
Activity 6
Hunting Like a Hawk Game - Leadership Component
This game demonstrates that even the most effective camouflage can fail if a hidden animal suddenly moves and catches the enemy's eye. Students will be leaders in their Expedition Groups and conduct this fun, kinesthetic demonstration to show how movement can attract predators' attention. (Please play this game as a class before students introduce it in their Expedition Groups.)
Activity 7 - Final Project
I Spy a Butterfly Hide and Seek is a wrap up task activity where the students utilize all they know about camouflage to color, then hide, a butterfly somewhere within Summit Elementary for students to eventually find.
(Lesson Plan)
(Student Reflection Sheet)
(Butterfly Template)
(Camouflaged Animal Test)
(Final Student Rubric)