Now You See Me, Now You Don’t activity
Instructions










Get three large pieces of paper (one white, one light grey and one dark
grey) and using a hole punch stamp out 75 discs (representing
peppered moths) from each sheet – the children can help you with this.
Get another set of large A2 sugar paper sheets (one white, one light
grey and one black) and lay these sheets on separate tables, close to
each other.
Ensure that 25 discs of each colour are placed on each coloured sheet,
so that there is an equal number of discs of different colour on each
sheet.
Get 3 plastic cups and mark each cup with a number or letter
representing the different environments, so that they don’t get mixed
up, e.g. Black cup ‘B’, Grey cup ‘G’ and White Cup ‘W”.
Place the relevant cup by the side of the relevant large coloured sheet,
Line up the children in a row, advise them that they are ‘birds looking
for moths to eat’, and that each paper sheet represents a clean, dirty
and very dirty environment.
Advise the children to pick one ‘moth dot’ up, of any colour, from each
sheet and place it in the cup next to the sheet, and then join the back of
the queue.
Once the class has been round once, advise them that they have been
too slow and need to be quicker. There should be enough dots to cover
whole class twice
Once they have gone round twice, ask the children to sit down, hand
out the cups to three different groups and ask the children to count how
many of each colour of moth was captured by the children and to make
a note of their numbers on a whiteboard.
Ask the children for their total numbers, and ask them to analyse the
results