Overview:
Kindergarten
45 minutes
Students will make an insect that could be camouflaged in its habitat.

Purpose:
TEKS- Systems (9) Living Organisms- Basic Needs
c. identify ways Earth provides resources for life

This activity will help students understand how camouflage can help insects survive.

Materials:
Book Animals in Hiding by Melvin Berger from the Macmillan Early Science Big Book Series. Magazines, wallpaper and construction paper.

Getting Ready:
Students will already need to have had a lesson on camouflage and the parts of an insect.

Motivation:
Read Animals in Hiding and discuss the book and tell what each animal or insect used to camouflage their self in.

Activity:
Tell students they are going to have an opportunity to create their own insect. Tell them this insect is going to live in your classroom. So in order for it to survive it will need to be able to be camouflaged from us. Tell them our principal would no t like it if we had insects loose in our classroom. So they really need to make a good insect in case he/she came in. Then he/she would never know we had insects in our classroom because they would be camouflaged. Now give them an example. You could tell them you are going to make an insect that is going to live in the block center. Ask students to help you. They should be able to tell you what colors it should be and maybe what kind of insect could live their in realtion to size. At this time go around t he room and let students pick any place they want their insects to live. As they choose their insects habitat, write it on a dry erase board. The let the students use magazines, wallpaper, or construction paper to go and create their insect. After they ha ve created their insect they may go and tape it in its new home.

Explanation:
At this point you can have students come up one at at time and tell everyone why they chose to camouflage their insect in a certain way.

Going Further:
Go outside and see if you can find some insects using camouflage in their habitat.

Closure:
Review with students why camouflage is important. Ask students what might happen to some of our insects if they were not camouflaged.

Assessment:
Ask some older students to come down and have them see if they can find all of the camouflaged insects. Then let each kindergartner pick a buddy to tell why they camouflaged their insect in that way.

Connection:
TEKS- Properties, Patterns, and Models (5)
Properties and Patterns- Organisms, Objects and Events
a. properties of objects and characteristics of organisms

You could come up with a list of animals and objects and how they are or use camouflage.

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