Chameleon Themed Books and Activities

My children have always been fascinated with chameleons! When peanut was just 2, she would ask the librarian for the same Chameleon book weekly- Chameleon, Chameleon by Joy Cowley.  She adored the photos in this non-fiction book and would "read" along with her favorite parts.

Little man has been fascinated by the chameleon characters in his fiction books: The Mixed up Chameleon by Eric Carle, A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni, and Chameleon's Colors by Chisato Tashiro . 

Chameleon isn't happy with being a chameleon and wishes to be like other animals, even humans.  We enjoy seeing him get mixed up as he wishes to be a flamingo, a deer, and more.  At the end of the story it teaches a great lesson about being happy with just being you! 

Activities

1. Act out the story with...

The Mixed Up Chameleon Story Patterns from Kiz Club

2. Paint a chameleon
Art Project by in His grace

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"Parrots are green, elephants are gray, pigs are pink." But chameleons change color wherever they go. "On lemons they are yellow. In the heather they are purple." One chameleon is not pleased with his changeable appearance. He thinks, "If I remain on a leaf, I shall be green forever, and so I too will have a color of my own."

Read to find out what this chameleon discovers! Another sweet story about accepting who you are. Great for teaching colors and camouflage science concepts.

Activities

1. Explore camouflage with this cool activity!

Colorful chameleons activity by Helping Little Hands

2.  Play a game.

Camouflage Chameleon Game by Bright Hub Education

3.  Toddler Activity
After cutting out a variety of different colored chameleons, have your child match colorful pom poms to the different chameleons.  For fine motor fun, provide plastic chop sticks. (If creating the above game, the chameleons can be reused for this activity.)

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What a fun story written by the Japanese author, Chisato Tashero. We love the colorful illustrations of the different animals yearning to be different colors and patterns.  What happens when all of the animals turn different colors?  Read to find out how the problem in this story is solved! Great story to be combined with the above stories of self acceptance and differences. 

Activities

 

1.  Make a Chameleon Puppet

Toilet Paper Roll Craft from DTLK

-just add a popsicle stick to make it into a puppet

2.  Explore Culture
Teach your child about Japan. Read a book or explore online.  Next, share on a  map Japan's location in relation to our country.  Share simple phrases in Japanese.

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More chameleon themed printables/activities-

ABC matching chameleon cards from The Virtual Vine

Chameleon Party Blowers from Disney Family

Books we'd like to explore...

So much fun.. looking forward to doing lots of chameleon activities with my kiddos... hope you'll join in on the fun!  Leave a link in the comments if you have a post or a fun idea!!

Enjoy your day!
Jen



Roller Coaster Physics for Kids!

                                        

Roller coasters are fast, fun, and exciting! They also involve a lot of Science-potential energy, kinetic energy, velocity, speed, friction, forces, gravity.....  Kids can learn about physics by building and testing  their own roller coaster. 

Materials needed

-foam insulating tubes (cut in half to make track)

-duct tape

-marble

-other recycled materials such as paper towel rolls for tunnels

-paper and pencil for planning

Sunshine (age9) adjusting her coaster so that her marble stays on
the track and makes the loop!

After designing and testing her rollercoaster, Sunshine wrote two paragraphs explaining how physics is involved in relation to her overall model and coasters in general.  She used her Science book, as well as information from websites to guide her with the writing component of this project.

                                         

Little man had to get in on the action as well!  I don't know what's cuter- the red long-johns or his attempt at getting that marble on the coaster? 

Resources:
How Roller Coasters Work
Hands-on Activity: Amusement Park Ride: Ups and Downs in Design
Roller Coaster Marbles: How Much Height to Loop the Loop?

Enjoy your weekend!

Jen

Go Back in Time

Do your children or students love learning about people from the past? If you have a little history buff at home like I do, then they will absolutely love this project! Recently, Sunshine was assigned a Living History Museum Project.  She had to become Harriet Tubman.  Her requirements included writing a personal narrative, sharing real or created artifacts, and creating a poster that shows a time-line of Harriet's life, maps and pictures.
My daughter worked so hard researching Tubman's life.  There were plenty of articles online, but what she enjoyed the most was reading books about her life.  She read Who was Harriet Tubman? by Yona Zeldis McDonough and Time for Kids: Harriet Tubman: A Woman of Courage.


Because it is a living museum, she had to dress as Harriet in a historical costume.  She could wear a costume or make her own.  We did both.  Luckily, I was asked to review a costume for Costume Discounters.  What perfect timing!  I searched on their site to pick out a costume that I could review that Sunshine could use for her project.  There was a large variety, but I wasn't able to find exactly what we needed.  So what do you do in the Creative and Curious Kids household? You improvise. We chose a Colonial Girl Costume and turned it into a Harriet Tubman costume.  It will get a lot of use, because now she wants to be a colonial girl for Halloween.  The costume is adorable and affordable.  The quality is good for the price that you are paying. The colonial costume retails for under $17.00 and is 100% polyester.  Below is a photo of the original costume from Costume Discounters.

Sunshine modeling the costume

And next, you'll see how we switched things up a bit to turn her into Harriet Tubman.

Harriet Tubman with her Gospel Hymns

Sunshine in character with project

Now that big sis has a costume, of course Peanut wants one as well!  I'm looking at this one below for her for this fall.  I think she'd make an adorable Betsy Ross.

Here's just a little bit more info. from their site:
Cheap Halloween costumes is the name of the game here at Costume Discounters. Our Incredible Lowest Price Guarantee ensures you'll get exceptional value when you buy your costume for Halloween or other occassion. Costume Discounters brings you the latest and best costumes at the lowest prices...all year round.

Well, this was wonderful experience for her.  I hope that you enjoyed reading about her project and my review.  

Enjoy your day,

Jen

Disclosure: I was provided with a costume at no cost by Costume Discounters in order to give my own personal opinions on it. The opinions I have given are mine and may differ from others but were not influenced by the company or the free product provided.

I am an affiliate for Amazon,therefore receive compensation if a product is purchased through an affiliate link.

Life at the Pond

Next weekend, we will once again be traveling to one of our favorite spots, our camp up in the mountains.  The kids are looking forward to getting their hands, feet, and everything else dirty while they investigate pond life.  Tadpoles, frogs, dragonflies, salamanders, striders, and more inhabit the pond near our camp.  Using nets, the kids scoop the wildlife out of the water to enjoy for just a small amount of time before returning them to their own habitat. 

As I was looking through my teacher resources, I found this great Pond Animal worksheet.  After teaching the kids about what life is like in a pond, the kids can invent a new animal that has adapted to pond life.  What would the animal eat? How will it fend off predators? How will it breathe? After thinking about these questions and discussing, a great project idea would be to sketch and label their new creature or to create the animal with clay or other materials. 

Pond Animal Worksheet 

Invent an animal that has adapted to pond life. Think about what life is like in a pond.

Name of pond animal:

 _______________________________


What does your animal eat?




What adaptations does your animal have for the following?

finding food:




moving around:




protection:




reproduction:




other amazing facts:







Worksheet above adapted from-
(Challenge Magazine May/Summer 2000 Vol 18 No. 5 Issue 90)
___________________________________________________

Other great resources:

Pond Explorer
Virtual Pond
Ponder This

Other ideas:
Discuss organisms that the kids can't see with the naked eye.  If available, use a microscope to view pond water.  Share PowerPoint: Using a Microscope & Life in a Pond

Discuss senses-What do you hear at the pond? Describe what you see?  What do you feel? What does the critter(s) feel like? Discuss.

Books that look like fun:


Let me know if you investigate pond life with your children.  I'll update you with our finds once we return from our camping trip. 

Enjoy this beautiful day!

Jen

Postcard Swap

I'm very excited to be participating in a National postcard swap organized by Playing by the book. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get into the International swap, but luckily she organized a second swap for all of us interested in the states!

We sent postcards to five different states and will receive 5 postcards from different states. As the cards come in the mail, the girls will mark the different states on a map.



Next, we'll research each state. What are the state symbols? landmarks? special foods? fun things to do? etc. Sunshine is interested in the state flags. First, I'll assess their background knowledge about our own state before moving on to new states. Then we can compare and contrast the different states.

Research resources

Enchanted Learning- USA/States

State Symbols

50 States Book List

Possible project ideas

-travel booklet

-tourism commercial

-state mobile

-PowerPoint

Also, stop over at Superheroes and Princesses. She has been doing some awesome state projects with her kiddos!

Please feel free to leave a comment and share any ideas for state projects. If you aren't participating in a swap, but are interested in something like this, out-of-state relatives are a great resource and kids love getting post cards from family!

Enjoy your day!

Jen

Interview with an Animal

Lately my girls have been getting into creative writing, especially my six year old. She loves making up stories, writing menus, etc. and I'm so glad that she isn't hindered by her invented spelling. So many kids get stuck on the spelling that they don't let the ideas flow.

Anyways, I've been thinking about how much fun it would be for the girls to write an interview for an animal that they are interested in, but don't know a lot about. They can pretend that they are newscasters on a television show like the Animal Planet. In order to write the interview though, they are going to need to research their animal first. What questions do they want to ask their animal?

Okay, my eight year old just came in and is looking over my shoulder as I write.

"Can I interview our new hamster?"
"Don't you already know a lot about hamsters?"
"Yes, but I want to pretend that it can talk back to me."

Funny,we don't even have our new hamster yet. Now how can I tell her no. She wants to be creative and pretend a hamster is talking to her and she wants to write. So now there you have it- another creative writing idea. Have your child write an interview to his or her pet- just for fun, just to be creative!

Fun ideas for publishing the interview-
*newspaper or magazine article
*act it out with props(table, microphone,poster, etc)
*puppet show (puppet making ideas! )

More writing fun:
Writing Activities for Kids at Home

Great Places to Research Animals:
National Geographic Kids
Animal Planet
Enchanted Learning

What animal do you think your child would like to interview?



Enjoy your day!
Jen

Travel With Us to Africa!

Last week, we were in Australia studying Aboriginal art and Australian music. This week, we "flew" over the Indian Ocean and landed on the continent of Africa. So far, we learned about different types of African masks.




Sunshine designed her own animal mask based on the African Elephant.




She is also studying the Meerkat and started recording facts about this African creature. Aren't they cute?
She had fun learning about the Meerkat over at Animal Planet.
I made a little booklet for her to help her focus her research. So far she has found out about the meerkat's diet, anatomy, and predators. We also enjoyed reading a folk tale from Africa. Next week, we will be exploring African music.
We are so lucky that she has an awesome art and music program through her Cyberschool. Her meerkat project is enrichment that I had planned for her to correlate with her other studies. She explored a variety of African animals and chose her animal based on her own interests.

If you ever need suggestions on planning your own mini-research project with your kids, let me know! Also, there are so many ways to demonstrate learning through a variety of products. For example, poster, puppet show, mural, etc.

Have a great day!!

Jen