Camouflage and Toddlers

Playing the Camouflage Game.

Last week, I came across another post (http://www.boredpanda.com/camouflage-owl-photography/) of stunning photography showing how well owls are camouflaged in their natural habitats.  It reminded me of how much I used to love teaching the subject of camouflage to elementary school children.  There are so many fun, hands-on activities you can do with this subject, let alone search and find the animal in an endless supply of pictures in magazines, books, and on the internet.  So I started thinking, why not teach my 2 ½ year old about camouflage.  She loves to play games and look for hidden items in her look and find picture books.  More importantly, she loves owls and would be amazed at the pictures of owls looking like the trees, rocks, or snow where they live. 

I decided to start with a fun game to get her thinking about the importance of colors and how they can help something get noticed (or not).  The game also gets her outside thinking about colors in nature.  First, I took a variety pack of pipe cleaners and separated out two of every color (there were ten colors, red, yellow, white, black, orange, blue, pink, green, brown, and tan).  Then I cut each pipe cleaner into four, near equal parts.  Outside, I designated an area (about five feet squared) and randomly spread the cut pipe cleaners over that area on the ground. 

Found two pipe cleaners!

About five feet away from the designated area, I had my daughter stand with a paper plate and listen to instructions for the game.  I decided to do a practice run just to make sure she knew what to do.  I had her place the plate on the ground where she stood.  I told her that when I said “go,” she should run to the designated area and find two pipe cleaners, put one in each hand, and run back to place each of them on the paper plate. Then, I explained, that she was to do it again until I said stop.  For the dry run, I let her find about half of the pipe cleaners while I kept an eye on how long it took her to collect them.  After she was done, we spread the pipe cleaners she had collected within the designated area to play again.  I did have to remind her throughout the game to be fast and to grab the first colors she saw (not to look for any particular color). 



Comparing collected pipe cleaners
with those not found in time.

For the “official” game, I reminded her to collect as many pipe cleaners as she could, two at a time, before she heard the buzzer.  I set a timer based on my guess of how long it would take from the practice run to make sure she would be able to collect about half of the pipe cleaners (it’s important to not give enough time to collect them all).  After the “official” run of the game, we took another paper plate marked, “Not found in time” and collected the rest of the pipe cleaners from the designated area.  Then I had her sort the colors on each plate.  I asked her if there were any colors on one plate that weren’t on the other.  Then we talked about how some colors are easier or more difficult to see in the grass and dirt where we played.  When a color is more difficult to see, it is called camouflage.  This is a very basic definition, but it’s one my and your preschooler will understand. 

Afterwards, we looked at those beautiful owl pictures.  It was a game too; my daughter loved looking for each of them! 

Even though this camouflage lesson was relatively simple, my daughter was completely engaged and learned while having fun.  It was a perfect introduction to a fascinating topic with a game that I’m sure she will want to play again and again.

*As a side note, you may want to mark off your designated area for the pipe cleaners with a rope or tape around the border.  The brown pipe cleaners were so well camouflaged, we had a difficult time finding all of them and lost track of where our designated area was supposed to be!