"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." Albert Einstein

03 June 2016

Book Munchers Book Club: A Color of His Own


The Book Munchers book club discussed Leo Lionni's book A Color of His Own, and then we did some activities. Because the picture book has some misinformation about chameleons, I supplemented our discussion with a nonfiction book about chameleons and we discussed the difference between fiction and nonfiction.


1. Catch a Bug: I gave the kids sticky hands to play with and let them try to "catch" the cards I had set out on the table. Each card had a different item on it, and the kids got to collect the cards that were things chameleons eat (mostly insects) and put back cards that showed things a chameleon would not eat (I generally used large mammals for these, to make it easy to tell apart).


Lesson Learned: Kids like to throw sticky hands at the ceiling. I wasn't bothered by this, but it did take longer to tear down this program at the end as we peeled the hands off the ceiling.


2. Color a Chameleon. The chameleon in the story changes color based on what he's sitting on, so I gave the kids a coloring page with a chameleon on it, and they could color it however they wanted. Some chose to make it like the pictures in the book we read, while others made realistic-looking chameleons.


3. Pony Bead Chameleons: We already have a lot of pony beads at our library, and I was able to find the directions to make a lizard online, so the kids made chameleons out of the beads. The added fun part was that I had UV-reactant beads for them to use, and these beads change color in the sun, so the chameleons they created could change color just like real ones do.


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