Chameleon, Chameleon by Joy Cowley
Chameleon, Chameleon
by Joy Cowley, Nic Bishop (Illustrator)
Guess why I bought the book Chameleon, Chameleon? To show first graders the great use of the ellipsis. First graders are capable of writing stories using the ellipsis. Here is a link to a punctuation site where clicking on the punctuation mark takes the viewer to a page about that mark. The chameleon story is wonderful and is illustrated with real photographs. It captivates the attention of children. I don’t really recommend buying it just for one punctuation mark, but for the story and photos of Madagascar panther chameleons. The book ends with two pages of interesting facts.
One writing workshop idea is to read this book to children and encourage them to try to include an ellipsis in their next written pieces.
An art idea is to read the book and consider the different chameleon colors. For instance, sometimes it has peaceful colors, and children could guess which feelings the chameleon has when turning the page prior to reading. Are the children right? They could color or paint chameleons and explain their color choices.
Here is a chameleon page to print for coloring or painting:
PDF 2 chameleons to color or paint, add branches to put them in a tree
PDF of one chameleon to color or paint
This is a link to the official author page for Joy Cowley.
There are quite a few YouTube videos of chameleons changing color that are worth checking out, too.
Happy . . . reading! Carolyn
