leaps and bounds: can you tell what it is yet?

You need to start with an eye. Followed closely by a pointy nose.

And then, without taking your pencil off the paper, try and add some legs…..

(one, two, three….

four)…..

a curly-whirly tail…..

and then go all the way round and back to where you started.

Can you tell what it is yet?

Well, I am afraid you are just going to have to wait because I need to tell you a story. A colourful story. A green red grey and pink story.

Actually though, rather than parrots…..

and goldfish…..

and elephants…..

and pigs…..

it is a story about a chameleon.

Does anyone know anything about chameleons?

Lakeisha does. “I think they change colours,” she tells us.

Tanisha expands on this. “The colour of the place they go, they are.”

Exactly.

“Normally, when another animal is going to eat it, they camouflage,” adds Nicholas.

But what does camouflage mean? Anyone know?

“It means hiding against something,” says Melchior.

So a chameleon changes its colour so it is difficult to see against the background.

Our poor chameleon. On a lemon he is yellow, in the heather he is purple and on a tiger he is striped.

But what he really wants is to have a colour of his own, not of his background.

His idea of staying forever on a leaf failed at the first hurdle. Come autumn of course the leaf changed colour and eventually both leaf and chameleon dropped to the ground with a BUMP.

In the spring, however, the chameleon found himself a friend. To cut a long story short, these two new friends decided to stay together, so that when one changed colour, so did the other one.

And of course they lived happily ever after.