Colourful Chameleons

With the help of the Mailbox magazine this month, Henry and I spent just under an hour doing several activities based on the book "A color of his own" by Leo Lionni. This story tells of a chameleon who desperately wants to have a colour like all the other animals. in his search for one colour, he finds something even better - a friend who changes colour just like him.

Prior to reading the book, I explained about chameleons changing their colour to match the object they were close to and asked for him to tell me what colour the chameleon would be on the grass; green, in the sky; blue and on a strawberry; red. We discussed whether Henry changed colour "don't be silly mummy" was his reply. So I asked him what colour he was...now this stumped him! So I asked what colour he thought I was..."pink". We then had a quick discussion about the other colours of people skin.

After reading the book, which he thought was great (especially the purple chameleon pictures)...which rather inspired his art work.... we did our first activity.

I provided Henry with a chameleon drawn on paper (downloaded from Mailbox website), which he cut out. We then discussed what colour he wanted to make his chameleon...purple of course. So I then asked for suggestions on what he may sit on to be that colour. Berries and flowers were good answers, but he decided on a purple berry, which he drew and coloured. then he placed the coloured chameleon on top and wrote a description at the top of the page.

Our second activity was a fun bit of art. Again I provided another chameleon which he cut out. He then covered a page in purple paint using his fingers...he loves messy stuff! He even realised he could draw shapes and write his name during this painting exercise using his nails. Insisting every last inch of the paper was covered in purple paint, he then added the chameleon on top and proceeded to change the chameleon the colour of the paper with more finger paint......a lot of fun.

Our last activity, which we did outside was colour matching chameleons to their leaves. Once again I used templates from Mailbox to do this. With only three colours this was a fast exercise, but one which reinforced the whole colour matching exercise.