Chameleon Food Craft 

I forgot about St. Patrick’s Day; let me reword that. I prepared, planned, and anticipated the holiday until the day it arrived and were busy with all the things life is filled with these days. 

So we had pipe cleaners, fruit loops, and marshmallows to use and no ideas to think of. Until this morning, when we read Masters of Disguise and What if You Have Animal Eyes. Then, suddenly, those supplies made perfect sense for my kids. We had just made buttercream to prepare for my son’s birthday cupcakes, and the leftover icing sparked an idea to create a chameleon-like in the books using all our leftover supplies. 

My daughter noticed the dots that chameleons have and how they reminded her of the fruit loops cereal. So we started experimenting with how to create this camouflaging animal and checked back in the books for inspiration. It was fun, delicious, and incredibly messy. 

Materials for Making the Chameleon Food Craft

• Fruit Loops
• Buttercream or condensed milk (uses about 1 Tbsp or less)
• Pipe cleaner
• Toothpicks 
• Marshmallows 
• Chameleon books 
• Sugar eyes 
• Sprinkles (optional)
• Spoon, plate, baby wipes

Tip: We used more than one book to help see different physical features of this creature we wanted to try and replicate with our creation. My daughter loved re-reading sections and coming up with plans of how to recreate parts of this animal from what we read.

Steps for Making the Chameleon Food Craft

1. Use toothpicks to attach three or four marshmallows together to form the chameleon body. We angled the marshmallow in different ways to test out how to make her look more lively. Then we added buttercream around the marshmallows and inserted the pipe cleaner as a tail. Toothpicks were added to the sides as legs. 
2. Fruit loops were added over the entire body, legs, and tail of the chameleon. 
3. Sugar eyes were added to the head, and a little more buttercream was added to keep the last fruit loops attached to the tail and legs. 
4. Compare chameleon food craft back into the books and notice the features, add more details as needed. 
5. Enjoy eating the creation once it’s completed! Our dog jumped up and ate our finished product right after this photo, so we will probably try this one again when she is napping! 

We love reading Masters of Disguise. Last year we finished an entire week dedicated to this book. Here are some of our favorite activities we did after reading this book. 

Thank you for visiting Live Learn Literacy

Please visit other posts for additional ideas for making learning literacy engaging and fun. 

Thank you, Chrissy