This week I am sharing a really great way to engage your children in exploring camouflage. I have been working in a primary school this week and I have used this little investigation with quite a few groups and children of all ages engaged with it. I thought because I had tried it, it would be good to pass on to you what worked well for different children. This can be used for children from 4 up to 12 years, just use the tip on making it more challenging or offering more support depending on where children are in their learning.
I am going to share with you:
5 steps on how to play
5 questions to provoke deeper thinking
5 ways this supports your child’s learning
4 top tips for making this harder
4 top tip for making this easier
I have also included a bonus clip of something you can do with the wool you find.
Sound ok?
You will need:
Different coloured wool cut into 50cm “ish” lengths (5-10 per child as a rough guide)
A black mat
How to prepare:
Hide the lengths of wool around your natural space. This could be your garden, a park, a wood. It’s a good idea to remember how many you have hidden so you can check you have collected them all back in or that your children aren’t searching for days for wool that isn’t here….. or maybe there is some value in this ??
Make sure they are within children’s reach and remind them to look high and low.
Lay the black mat out for children to put their wool on as they find it.
How to play
Explain that there are 10 (for example) coloured worms hiding
Some are really good at hiding, some aren’t
When you find one place it on the black mat and then run to find the next and repeat
If children lay them on the black mat in order they are recording which were easy to find and which were not so easy to find. In theory, they should find all the ones that are not well camouflaged first. This doesn’t always happen but it’s fun finding out.
It’s a good idea to give a time limit. You could make it into a competition. If you are on your own you could hide 5 for your child and your child hide 5 for you.
5 ways to provoke deeper thinking
Children might want to play it again and again before they are ready to talk about what they found out. Some children won’t want to talk about it at all and that’s ok because they have still learnt they just aren’t ready to verbalise this.
Tell me about the wool you found first/last
What do you notice about the colours?
Lie the wool on the grass and ask… If you were a bird which worm would you see first?
Why do you think this is?
I wonder why it is important for worms to be the colour of the soil?
How does this support children’s learning?
Cross curricular links such as:
Knowledge of the world links to animals and food chains.
Maths links to measuring the wool, counting the wool.
Creativity links to naming colours and shades.
Physical development links to climbing, running, balance. As well as fine motor skills involved in holding wool.
Most importantly, personal, social and emotional links such as; it supports children’s wellbeing because it is fun to find things and when they do, it improves self esteem as does becoming in charge of the game and making up new rules. Children get a sense of what is fair.
Top tips to give more help
Lay a colour wool that is easy to see on the grass and next to it one that isn’t easy to see, then ask children which one is the easiest to see.
During the hunt you could say hotter and colder to give clues.
Hide bigger items, I hide little knitted hats with different coloured pom poms on for Foundation stage children. (5 year olds)
Use colours that will show up in a natural environment, depending on which season you are in. I thought yellow would show up well until I saw that the daffodils were flowering.
Top tips for more challenge
Extend the talk to other animals, using words such as prey, predator, camouflage.
Use colours that match the natural environment making it even harder to find.
Children could think of ways to change the game and make it harder.
Ask children to think of a way to make it easier for a younger child.
I hope you have found this useful, please let me know and I can share a few more activities. As promised here is a link to making a friendship bracelet once you have found the wool.
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