Rainbow Chameleon Book Review and Paper Plate Craft!

My kids and I enjoy reading Rainbow Chameleon 变色龙捉迷藏. To reinforce the concept of the chameleon’s special color changing skills, we also made a spinning paper plate chameleon craft to extend the learning fun!

I’m going to share a quick review of the book and show you how we made the chameleon craft into a bilingual literacy activity!

Rainbow chameleon book and color-changing paper plate spinning craft

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Rainbow Chameleon 变色龙捉迷藏 Book

Title: Rainbow Chameleon 变色龙捉迷藏 / 變色龍捉迷藏
Author: Yusuke Yonezu
Age: 0-4 years
Where to buy: Different websites have different language versions; please check carefully when you order!
- Simplified Chinese (no pinyin or English)
  - China Sprout
- Traditional Chinese
  - China Sprout
- English
  - Amazon

Rainbow Chameleon book by By Yusuke Yonezu

Rainbow Chameleon 变色龙捉迷藏 Book – Quick Review

This is an adorable board book about chameleons and how they change color to blend into their surroundings.

The story revolves around a chameleon trying to find a friend, but the friend is hard to find because of her color blending skills. While searching for his friend, he encounters some scary situations. However, the interactive tabs and colorful spinning wheels show how the chameleon adapts to hide in his surroundings!

The colorful spinning wheels are in the front and back cover, and each page has a pull-tab. These interactive features are a fun, hands-on way for kids to learn about the chameleon’s unique skill! The illustrations are simple with bold colors but not over-stimulating.

Since the text is repetitive, the story is fun to follow and also relatively easy for parents who are not fluent in Chinese (like me!) to learn. My 19-month-old son and 4-year-old daughter both enjoyed this book!

Paper plate rainbow chameleon craft!

Just for fun, to supplement this book reading, we made a paper-plate rainbow chameleon spinning wheel! The idea is originally from Tippytoe Crafts, a website with wonderfully creative and educational ideas!

Since we try to incorporate literacy in our activities, we made two versions: Korean & Chinese. We also made 2 paper plate chameleons because there 2 chameleons in the story!

In addition, I noticed that my kids loved to touch the “CHAMELEON” words on the board book, so I wanted to create the same effect on the plates. They loved feeling the texture of the words on our craft!

Important vocabulary:

变色龙 (Biànsèlóng / chameleon)
捉迷藏 (Zhuōmícáng / hide and seek)
变颜色 (Biàn yánsè / change colors)

Painting paper plates with color - process art

Supplies for the paper plate chameleon craft

2 paper plates
Paint – You can use different kinds of paint so your kids can explore and compare how they look!
Paint brushes
Pencil/marker
X-acto knife
Cutting board (I just used one from our kitchen)
Paper fastener
Tape
Optional: chameleon template (many free options on Google!)

How to make a color-changing chameleon craft

Paint paper plate desired colors. This is really fun for kids to use whatever paint they choose!
Use a second paper plate to trace chameleon template or draw chameleon freehand
Use marker to write 变色龙 (chameleon) in thick font
Put cutting board under paper plate
Cut out chameleon shape – The cutting steps are reserved for adults and older, trustworthy children only!!
Cut around the text 变色龙.
Use tape to hold the any loose pieces between the characters. Tape the front and back of the plate to secure the Chinese characters. This also will help the characters last longer with curious little hands!
Cut a slit in center of the plate
Insert and secure paper fastener
Spin, spin, spin!

We actually made these paper plate chameleon wheels last year, and the plates are still holding up really well! This is mainly because my older daughter has been hiding them from her little brother haha.

Tips for cutting out the letters for the Chameleon craft

Inspired by the book cover with the cut out English “CHAMELEON” word, we cut out both Chinese and Korean characters in the paper plates. It was fun for my children to feel the different languages!

Chameleon paper plate craft - cut out Chinese characters

Since the Chinese characters were harder to cut, I wanted to show you a close up of the Chinese chameleon paper plate. We affixed tape to both sides of the paper plate to keep the Chinese characters in place!

Have you read this chameleon book or tried the paper plate chameleon craft?

If you read this Chameleon book or try this paper plate chameleon craft, please let us know. in the comments below. We love to see how other families do educational activities!