The Bryan Innovation Lab at The Steward School
Get Ready
Suggested Supplies
- Paper towel tubes (1 per child, cut in half)
- Construction paper, colorful magazine clippings, stickers, or paints for decoration
- Stapler, glue, or tape
- Hole punch
- String or yarn
- Toy animals, animal cutouts, or nature items to hide
Before You Begin
"Today we’re going to make our own binoculars and go on a special hide-and-seek adventure! We’ll search outside for hidden animals and treasures, just like nature detectives. We’ll use our observation skills.
Observation is more than just looking – it is about noticing details that other people might miss. Fast looks give fast answers, but slow looks help us discover cool things we didn’t notice at first!"
Step-by-Step
Step 1: Make your binoculars.
Binoculars can be made days in advance, or right before the activity. These binoculars can be used by children again and again!
- Cut a paper towel tube in half.
- Staple, glue, or tape the two halves side-by-side to form a pair of binoculars.
- Punch a hole on each outer edge and tie a piece of yarn through the holes to make a neck strap. Some children may prefer binoculars with a handle. Simply glue a wooden craft stick or pencil between the tubes!
- Invite children to decorate their binoculars with whatever materials you have on hand—stickers, crayons, paint, or even natural materials like leaves.
The Bryan Innovation Lab at The Steward School
BilingualKid School
Step 2: Choose what animals you’ll search for.
Before heading outside, decide what kinds of animals you’ll be looking for on your adventure.
- Option 1: Invite children to color and cut out animal shapes. You can draw your own or use a printable resource, like the Endangered Species Coloring Book from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Consider choosing animals that live in your area, such as local birds, squirrels, rabbits, frogs, or insects.
- Option 2: You can also have children decorate smooth stones or pinecones with brightly colored paints and hide those.
- Option 3: If you’d rather skip the cutting, coloring, and painting, children can gather stuffed animals or small toy animals from the classroom or home to hide and find.
The Bryan Innovation Lab at The Steward School
Nature Ninos Prescott
Step 3: Hide the animals and treasures.
Children or adults can hide toy or stuffed animals, animal cutouts, and/or natural items outside in visible places—on tree branches, in the grass, or near logs and rocks. Challenge children to think about where that animal would be found in its natural habitat. For example, they might hide birds in trees, frogs near water, and mammals in tall grass.
For very young children, try hiding items in a smaller, designated space like a sandbox or under a blanket for a game of peek-a-boo!
Mariana Altritcher
Step 4: Go on a seek and find adventure!
Activate prior knowledge by asking children if they have ever played “hide and seek.” They’ll be using their binoculars to play a similar game. Before they start searching, decide if children should collect the items they find, or leave them where they find them so their friends can find them, too.
Give children their binoculars and invite them to explore the area. Encourage them to use their binoculars to search high and low.
Ask:
- Look closely. What colors, shapes, or patterns do you notice?
- How many different animals can you see?
- What animals did you find? What do you imagine they were doing?
Repeat the activity throughout the seasons to notice how your space—and the animals and plants—change over time!
The Bryan Innovation Lab at The Steward School
The Bryan Innovation Lab at The Steward School
Children Are Working On
- Strengthening observation and attention skills
- Identifying colors, shapes, and patterns
- Engaging in imaginative play
- Describing and storytelling
- Developing fine and gross motor skills
Variations
- For older children, use real binoculars and see what animals you might find!
- Make it a group game! Let children take turns hiding and finding. Add in a “hot/cold” clue system to support problem-solving and teamwork.
- Try camouflage! How might you disguise an animal to make it blend in with its surroundings? What color animals are the hardest to find? Easiest to find? Why?
More to Explore
Word Bank
- Observation - carefully looking, listening, or noticing something to learn more about it; using your senses to find out what’s happening around you.
- Binoculars – something you look through with both eyes to help you see things that are far away, like birds in a tree or animals in the distance.
- Habitat – a home in nature. It’s the place where an animal or plant lives and gets everything it needs, like food, water, and shelter. A pond, a tree, or a grassy field can all be habitats.
- Camouflage - when an animal's colors or patterns help it blend in with where it lives so it’s hard to see.
Background Information
- Observation builds essential thinking skills. It builds important skills like focus, noticing details, and asking questions—key for science, reading, and math.
- Many different animal species have shapes and colors, called camouflage, that makes it harder for them to be seen. Spots, stripes, and asymmetrical shapes can help break up their body outline. For example, White-tailed deer coats change color from reddish-brown to gray in the winter to provide camouflage in the forest. Check out more examples of camouflage here!
- A species is a group of living things of the same kind, such as all maple trees or all robins. A native plant or animal is one that naturally occurs in a specific region and plays an important role in the local ecosystem.
Reading Connections
Even More
- Family, Friends, & Forests: Talk about shapes you might find in a forest.
- Do Your Part: Model respect for all living things and outdoor spaces. If you take anything outdoors, make sure it finds its way back home (or another appropriate place).
- Career Exploration: Invite children to explore a green job that uses patterns and colors, such as NATURE ARTIST. Provide paint brushes, easels, aprons, and other art supplies to act out being nature artists. Try making your own artist palette out of cardboard!
S.J. Bencriscutto Amado | Minneapolis Nature Preschool
Seek & Find
Download a one-page version of the activity. The download includes a list of materials, shortened steps, what children are working on, and a suggestion for adapting or expanding the activity.