If you tell kids that you are taking them on a nature walk, the first thing they may want to know is, “What animals will we see?”
You can introduce some of these activities during your walk so the children can better understand how color allows animals to camouflage with their surrounding, making it difficult to see them – even if they are nearby.
The activities can also inspire kids to improve their drawings and paintings of nature by using a larger palette of colors, just as they find in nature.
Nature’s Kaleidoscope – Finding Different Colors in Nature
Prepare for this activity either by dyeing toothpicks with watercolor paints or cutting one-inch squares of construction paper. Either way, you’ll want twenty to fifty objects in each of the following colors – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, brown, black, and white.
Outdoors, select a small area with as much variety of ground cover and color as possible and scatter the toothpicks or paper squares over the area. Don’t try to hide the objects, just scatter them.
Then, have the players move into the area and try to find as many toothpicks or paper squares as possible. When discovery of the items slows down, call the group to sit in a circle. Have the players sort the objects they found by color.
Can they remember which colors they located first? Which colors where the hardest to find? What colors do you see in the nature surrounding you? Repeat this activity in another place.
Hiding Animals – Coloring Activity and Game
Look online for a coloring page of an animal of your choice. You’ll want two copies of an image for each child doing this activity. Instruct the children to color one image realistically and the other oddly, using colors not normally seen with the animal. Cut out the two images.
Take the pictures outdoors and instruct the children to hide their two animals without placing them under rocks, leaves, or logs. Then have the children look for the animals hidden by other children.
Which animal pictures were easier to find – the animals colored realistically or oddly?
Color Hunt – A Color Matching Activity
Go to the hardware store and collect paint chip samples in different shades of brown. Cut the samples into individual colors. Allow the children to take one-to-three color chips and explore an area that you’ve defined, trying to match the colors they are holding to something in that space. When they make a successful match, they leave the chips in place.
Then, encourage the children to go in search of color samples hidden by other players. How many paint chips were they able to locate? What brought them to attention? The paint chips are a lot smaller than most animals and they are solid colors. Are most animals a solid color? What is the advantage of being many colors?
Next, hand children three-to-five paint chips each and have them select a small location on a flat surface where they try to place all of the chips, close enough so the colors touch or overlap. Could they camouflage the colors with the surroundings? What else would help to camouflage the paint chips?
Use these activities to get kids thinking about why so many animals have spots, stripes, and other patterns. You can also point out that another way animals blend in with their surroundings is to freeze in place, which, along with their coloration, makes them less noticeable.
 |
