Camouflage – Snow Rabbit, Spring Rabbit

It was one of those really long, but good days.  I want to just curl up and go to bed but I thought I should post about our book today.

Our next book from the “Kindergarten Ready, Set Go!” calendar was Snow Rabbit, Spring Rabbit: A Book of Changing Seasons by Il Sung Na.  I read this book to my Kindergarten class back in March as a diagnostic task for assessing their ability to Make Connections.  After studying signs off Fall and our unit on migration in November I wanted to see they  could connect with this book and how the different animals know that it is time for winter.   After that activity I put in on the shelf but pulled it out today to read to Eileen and my niece who is visiting for a couple of days.

Since it is not really a time of year when they can relate to changing seasons, just VERY warm dry weather, I decided to focus on a different aspect of the book.  The rabbit in the book know it is time to change the season and changes the colour of it’s coat.  We talked about why he might change his colour, and with some prompting we figured out that he might want to be able to hide.  In the winter with a white coat, he can hide in the snow but that wouldn’t work very well in the spring so he changes his colour to blend into different surroundings.

I then sent the girls on a hunt to each find 3 stuffed animals in our ‘stuffy bin’ that they could hide outside.  I talked about how we would want them to blend in with their environment.  They really didn’t understand this at all but had fun playing find the stuffy.  I was glad I picked 2 to hide so that it was bit harder for them to find.

They didn’t quite understand the hiding concept and I found them just laying on the grass.  It was kind of funny that Lyric hid her first and then Eileen pretty much just went and put them in the same spot.

I thought that I hid mine in places a bit more difficult to find but I also was more strategic picking what animals to use.

They found the hummingbird pretty easy but needed a lot of guidance to find the brown monkey in the bush – can you find it?

Even though the girls didn’t understand the purpose of the game or really understand camouflage at all we had fun.  If I was to do this again, after reading the book I would show them some images of real animals and how they use their colours to camouflage.  Then I would give them toy animals to hid that they would be able to blend into their environment.  For example they may have had more luck with the green turtle.

After playing we went on a search for some very special twigs and then took them back in to the air conditioned house.  I told them we were going to make our own animals that we would then later hide for Kaitlyn to try and find outside.  I got out the goggly eyes, pipe cleaners, white glue and a bit of gold glitter glue.  We made our own creatures out of our sticks, and the two pinecones the girls just had to use.  I found my inspiration at KinderNature.

They are a bit more camouflaged but the urge for the girls to pick bright colours for their legs won out (mine is the one with the brown legs).  We didn’t have time to hide them for Kailtyn today but we will make sure we do it sometime this weekend before my nieces go home!