Chameleons Storytime

I hope everyone had a decent Turkey Day…or Black Friday shopping spree?…Maybe got to at least visit with family and friends?

Well, I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday weekend, even those that don’t celebrate that holiday.

Sorry it’s taken me so long to write this, my last storytime of the year, but admittedly this as been an awful last few weeks… and honestly, I’ve just been to depressed and angry to do anything really library related.

If you read my previous post, you know that a few weeks ago a dear friend passed away. Also during that time, I had a job interview for a position in my library, in MY department, that I’ve been begging for for 5 of the 6 years I’ve been working there.

Despite everything, I got my shit together and did an awesome interview.

Then, barely a week later, I get my call back telling me that they WOULDN’T be recommending me for the position. It’s an outreach position and the wanted someone who was aggressive and outgoing because apparently with library outreach, you have to shoulder your way in to a few doors…and they felt that my somewhat shy personality would make doing that uncomfortable for me. Oh and after only 30 mins with me during and interview, they felt that I was better suited to working with older children….. doesn’t matter that I’ve been doing effing TODDLER storytime for 6 blessed years….. But hey, they apparently knew me better than my immediate supervisor, who was pushing for me to have this position.

Needless to say, I was – am – beyond pissed.

On top of that, the woman I spoke to tried to comfort me by telling me that she knew I wanted a 40 hr position and she would personally look for me one. Really? You’re going to go out of your way and look for a 40 hour slot for little ol’ me? Wouldn’t it just be bloody easier to give me the effing position I applied for? The one I have LITERALLY been requesting for 6 years?!?! But, oh no…. I’m gonna trust that you have my best interests at heart.

Then to just add to my already shitty month, our new puppy catches some sort of illness and passes away before we can get the money together to take him to the vet.

It’s probably just as well that I had a week of vacation following that; because I simply was NOT in a good mindset.

Even now, a week later and a half, I’ve having a really hard time climbing out of my proverbial hole and giving a shit.

But, I’m here, and I realized still had one last storytime blog post to make for this year. So… Chameleons….

I started with Leon the Chameleon by Melanie Watt

Which was a cute, simple, story involving a chameleon that couldn’t quite seem to blend in. No matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn’t turn the right color. On a green leaf, he’d turn red, in blue water he’d turn orange…. always with the opposite colors. Until one day, that mismatched ability of his comes in handy and saves the day.

Next I read a nonfiction book called Chameleon, Chameleon by Joy Cowley

This was an easy-nonfiction that described a Chameleons journey from one tree to another in search of food. It had nice colorful pictures of real animals that live in the jungle with the chameleon. There were several places were I was able to talk about camouflage with the kids and ask them if they could find the hidden animal in the picture.

After that we had a matching game. I had different color leaves, some plain and some with poka-dots; and different color chameleons, some plain and some with poka-dots. I would hand out the chameleons to the children and they had to come up and place their chameleon on its matching leaf.

Here’s the link to the pdf

chameleon-matching

After that I read Chameleon Sees Colors by Anita Bijsterbosch.

Another cute, easy story. Chameleon had only ever seen in black and white, until one day, he sees….. and then it goes through a bunch of different animals, similar to Brown Bear, Brown Bear. However, at one point you only see a small faction of the animal and it’s color… so its fun to ask the kids what they think Chameleon sees, and when the animal is revealed, what sound it makes.

I also switched out Leon for Rex by Ursula Dubosarsky, for my afternoon session, since I had more older children.

Rex about a school class pet that gets to go home with a different student everyday and the children have to write down, or draw, what Rex did with them while he was at their house…. some of the drawings are down-right hilarious. At one point, poor Rex looked more like Godzilla than a Chameleon.

For the craft, I did a color changing chameleon.

It was fairly simple to do; all you need is:

paperplates

markers/crayons/paints

round head fasteners

optional

google eyes

glue dots

You’ll need to find a chameleon that has a decent shillohette. Once you’ve found one you like – a simply Google search will pop up dozens- then you’ll need to trace it on to the inside of a paperplate.

Then cut it out.

Next put a hole in the center of that plate, the scissors work well for doing that.

Actually go ahead and grab a bunch of plates that don’t have a chameleon and put holes in those too.

You see, the children color the 2nd plate however they wish – preferably in a rainbow of colors. When they’re done, you’re going to set the 1st plate with the chameleon cut-out on top of the 2nd rainbow plate, and fasten them together with your fasteners.

The top plate can be moved around the rainbow plate, giving your chameleon a rainbow of different looks.

Now for mine, I made sure to include a place for the eye so I could place a googley eye there…. but you don’t have to do that by any means.