Find all the differences between the colorful character cards in our Hidden Difference Puzzles! The puzzles are great for encouraging critical thinking through comparison and contrast.
The Hidden Difference Puzzle Cards each come in a set of 4, with 12 different character cards. Each of the cards features an image of a young person dressed in some kind of career uniform with an assortment of props related to that specific character. Each card in the set of 4 that is outlined in blue is your starting point. This is the card that you will use to compare to all the other cards! Take the blue card from any of the sets and discuss with your students what is featured in the picture. Observe the clothes that the young person is wearing. What kind of career is she or he representing? What are the elements in the picture that help support your students’ guesses?
Once you have an understanding of what each card represents, talk about what people in these professions do and how they are important to community building. You can even start to discuss with your students what kinds of interests they have that may be reflected in their career choices one day!
There are enough cards for pairs of students to work on finding all the differences together. The comparison cards are bordered in green for easy, yellow for intermediate and red for challenging, meaning that there are more differences in the cards as you progress through the more difficult cards.
Learning about comparisons is a great way to encourage critical thinking in students. If you’d like a more introductory approach to learning about different versus same, consider trying this activity! We used found things in a classroom and a salad tray to help students categorize the differences between items through tactile and visual sense. Once students are comfortable with identifying differences in objects, they can progress to using the Hidden Difference cards.
Get your students to mark down all the differences. They can use dry-erase markers directly on the cards to indicate where the differences are. The surface of the cards is easy to wipe with baby wipes or glass cleaner and paper towel. Once students are confident with their discoveries, they can check their work against all the answers printed at the back of the blue card.
This is a great activity to get students to work together while exercising their brains and having fun!
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