The Predator and The Prey

We have started Science this year using Apologia Zoology. Our first lesson was a general introduction to land animals and the fact that while some tend to hunt, others tend to be hunted.

Now this lesson offered an experiment using Skittles - who can say no to that.

The title of this experiment was "Predator and Prey", with the lesson on how important camouflage can be for the prey and how difficult it can make it for the predator.

Of course, I had already read the instructions for this experiment and could see how it would play out. However, I did not say much to them about what we were looking for - just told them what to do one step at a time trying to see if they could figure out what was going to happen.

First we ripped 3 colors of construction paper into small pieces and put into a small bucket. The Skittles come in 5 different colors, see where we are going yet?

We then counted 9 of each color of Skittle and poured into the bucket of shredded paper. Each student had 2 minutes to find as many Skittles as possible. Now, I was still not leading them into the "why" of this. They each had a sheet to fill out showing how many of each color they started with and how many they found. Once the sheets were complete, I asked them if they noticed anything about the colors they found the most of.

We noted that the colors that they found all of were not the same as the colors of paper in the bucket. It took a minute (they were on a candy rush) to realize what had happened. They even had to actually test it by placing same color candy on paper and then opposite color.