The Mixed-Up Chameleon: Camouflaged Chameleon Hunt

Chamouflaged Chameleon Hunt | Mama Papa Bubba

Oh my word…  I’m pretty sure book activities are quickly becoming Miss G’s favourite thing ever.  So much so that when I asked her what she’d like to do the other day and proceeded to suggest a trip to the beach, a morning at the pool, or a visit to an indoor play area, she quickly responded with, ‘I know! I want to do another fun book activity!’  So that’s what we did.  {Apparently the fun outings can wait.}

{this post contains affiliate links}

We pulled out The Mixed-Up Chameleon by Eric Carle, our Preschool Book Club’s story of the week, and a longtime favourite of ours.  If you haven’t read it before, The Mixed-Up Chameleon is a story about a colour-changing, camouflaging, fly-eating chameleon who doesn’t feel like his life is all that exciting.  One day, he happens upon a zoo and finds that his wishes to be like all of the animals in the zoo come true!  The only trouble is that by the time he’s done wishing, he’s so mixed up that he isn’t able to catch the fly he so desperately wants. Before long, he realizes that he’s happiest when he’s himself and he goes back to his life of changing colours and catching flies, which makes for a lovely story ending.

While we did think about doing something involving zoo animals or mixed-uppedness {ya, I just wrote that}, we decided to focus on camouflage for our activity and I’m so glad we did.  Out of all of our book club activities so far – our Pete the Cat button sewing activity, our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom sensory bin, and even our Little Blue and Little Yellow inspired colour mixing exploration – our camouflaged chameleon hunt has received the most play time so far.

IMG 8745

The funny part is that it is by far the simplest of the 4 activities.  Here’s everything we used to prepare {well, this and a stapler I grabbed part way through}…  The Mixed-Up Chameleon {obviously}, plus a set of translucent page dividers {like these}, a Sharpie {this awesome set always seems to be on sale for 54% off}, and a pair of scissors.

IMG 8746

After reading the story and talking a little bit about camouflage, we got started by cutting our dividers apart so that they were single ply.

IMG 8753

Then, we selected a chameleon image from the book and I quickly traced it onto our page divider using permanent marker.

IMG 8757

After watching me do the first one, Gracen wanted to try making her own chameleon – a purple one of course.  To help her be successful with the tracing part, I used two tiny pieces of tape to hold her plastic page divider in place while she traced.

IMG 8761

Then it was time to cut our chameleons out.  In order to be a little more efficient, I staple several page dividers to my green one and cut out five at a time…

IMG 8759

While Grae focused on her purple guy.

IMG 8752
Before long, we had a whole collection of chameleons.

IMG 8769

Then it was time have some fun!  While Gracen waited patiently down at one end of the house, I found fun places for our chameleons to ‘hide’.

IMG 8770

Technically the chameleons were all in plain sight, but I made sure to place them in spots where they would either blend in with or take on the surface’s colour or pattern – the focus was camouflage after all!

IMG 8806

This was no easy feat in a home furnished with as much white as ours, but I managed to find several good spots.

IMG 8776

Do you see the sneaky guy hiding here?  Grae thought he was particularly funny.

IMG 8800

By far, the clear chameleons were my favourite to hide, though I did wish that I’d left one without the black outline just to make it that much trickier to find.

IMG 8768

Our black carpet turned out to be a great camouflaging spot…

IMG 8774

As was highly patterned clothing.

IMG 8789

With all of our chameleons ‘hidden’, it was time for the search to begin.

IMG 8795

IMG_8811

IMG_8815

While I did manage to get these few action shots, most just involve a very blurry Gracen running through the house excitedly searching for chameleons and shrieking with each find.

IMG 8781

Of course once she’d found all ten chameleons, it was time to switch roles.  She became the hider and I became the finder.  {This is one of her hides.}

IMG 8791

The game continued on and on all afternoon until I convinced her that we should do one final hide before Papa returned home from work so he could join in on the fun.  And you’d better believe she put him straight to searching when he walked in that door!  I have a feeling we’ll be doing many more camouflaged chameleon hunts in the next few days.  ☺

 

Ready for some more fun Mixed-Up Chameleon activities?  Here’s what our lovely friends came up with:

Mixed Up Chameleon

mixed-up snack mix     |     chameleon sensory bin     |      mixed-up creatures     |     feed me flies game

Are you following us on Facebook and Instagram yet?

We’d love to have you!

 

8 thoughts on “The Mixed-Up Chameleon: Camouflaged Chameleon Hunt

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.