Thrifty Scissors: elephant

Showing posts with label elephant. Show all posts

Saturday, June 17, 2023

The Circus

The Circus
Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Friday came and the circus was there,
And Mother said that the twins and I
And Charles and Clarence and all of us
Could go out and see the parade go by.

And there were wagons with pictures on,
And you never could guess what they had inside,
Nobody could guess, for the doors were shut,
And there was a dog that a monkey could ride.

A man on the top of a sort of cart
Was clapping his hands and making a talk.
And the elephant came- he can step pretty far-
It made us laugh to see him walk.

Three beautiful ladies came riding by,
And each one had on a golden dress,
And each one had a golden whip.
They were queens of Sheba, I guess.

A big wild man was in a cage,
And he had some snakes going over his feet.
And somebody said, "He eats them alive!"
But I didn't see him eat.

Monday, November 14, 2022

Remorse

The elephant's cornack.

An elephant, from some motive of revenge, killed his cornack or conductor. The man's wife, who beheld the dreadful scene, took her two children, and threw them at the feet of the enraged animal, saying, "Since you have slain my husband, take my life also, as well as that of my children." The elephant instantly stopped, relented, and as if stung with remorse, took up the eldest boy with his trunk, placed him on its neck, adopted him for his cornack, and would never afterwards allow any other person to mount it.

Thursday, July 23, 2020

Circus Elephants Paper Cuts

The circus clown and tight rope walker balance on an elephant with monkey.

Vintage paper cuts of an era ended, these circus elephants are now only found in books. I've restored these for your scrapbooks only. Enjoy.

Circus elephants walk behind each other into the arena.

Saturday, July 18, 2020

Elephant: 33 Facts

Both male and female African elephants have tusks.
However, only some male Indian elephants
have tusks today.

The elephant is the largest living land animal, comprising two species, the African and the Asiatic.

33 Facts About Elephants:

The African elephant is the larger, stronger and more ferocious of the two, its hide is tougher and its ears larger, its head is less elevated.
Its back slopes downward from shoulders to rump.
Its trunk is longer and drags on the ground, even when the end of it is curled.
Both sexes have tusks.
The Asiatic, or Indian, elephant, as it is often called, is smaller.
The Asiatic elephant's back is decidedly rounding, and only the males bear tusks.
It is this elephant which is seen at circuses, for unlike the African elephant, it is tame in captivity.
Sometimes elephants attain the height of fifteen feet, but usually a mature animal is from nine to ten feet high and weighs from 4,000 to 10,000 pounds.
The body is very bulky, the legs are enormously large and almost straight and the short toes are covered by hoof-like nails.
The skin of the elephant is very thick and coarse, and it bears only here and there a few scattered hairs.
The most remarkable feature of the elephant is its long trunk, an extension of the nose. It has two tubes extending to the tip.
This tip is exceedingly sensitive, and in one species it is furnished with two small projections; one, which somewhat resembles a finger, extends from the upper surface, the other projects from the lower side.
By means of its trunk, the animal can pick up very small objects.
The trunk is provided with very strong muscles and is useful in procuring food and for defense.
With his trunk the elephant picks up and puts into his mouth all his food and water.
With its trunk, the elephant makes a loud trumpeting noise, his signal of alarm or anger.
The cutting teeth on each side of the upper jaw develop into long tusks, useful to the animal in a natural state both for grubbing food and for defending itself against attack.
In some well-grown males each tusk weighs as much as 200 pounds.
Although the head of the elephant is enormously large, and its forehead broad, yet its brain is small.
However, this does not show any lack of intelligence, for no animal, with the possible exception of the horse and dog, can be taught to do more things requiring intelligence than the elephant.
Elephants live in herds of considerable size, but the old males sometimes leave the herds or are driven from them, and thereafter live solitary lives.
They usually become vicious and exceedingly destructive sometimes demolishing native crops. Such elephants are commonly called rogues.
The wild elephants are caught in various ways. Sometimes pits are dug, into which the animals fall; or, a strong enclosure is built, into which the elephants are driven by fires, gun shots or other loud noises.
In some localities trained elephants are sent out into the forests to make the acquaintance of wild ones and lead them into captivity.
Two tame elephants can keep a single wild one so interested that the hunters are able to come up and put heavy chains about its legs and tie it to a tree, where it is held during the furious anger which follows its capture.
After a long and tedious struggle, the captured elephant is subdued and then becomes tame and submissive.
Elephants have been known since very early times. The earliest records in history tell us that they were trained by man to do various things even to take part in war.
Hannibal had with him an army of elephants when he invaded Italy, and much of his success was due to the terror they inspired.
The animals have been used to a greater extent in India than in any other country.
There they have been for centuries a chief means of conveyance, carrying passengers in commodious canopied seats on their backs.
Two or more persons may occupy this seat; the driver sits on the animal's neck.
Elephants can be taught to do numerous kinds of work, to Lift great weights and to carry heavy loads.
Many elephants were once held in captivity, altogether for show purposes. There was hardly a zoological garden in existence that did not have one or more of these animals.

More Facts About Elephants from The Web:

More About Elephants from Our Blogs:

Thursday, September 28, 2017

The Circus Procession

The Circus Procession

by Evaleen Stein

Oh, hurry! hurry! here they come,
The band in front with the big bass drum
And blaring bugles, — there they are,
On golden thrones in a golden car,
Tooting and fluting, oh, how grand I
Hi diddle, diddle!
The fife and the fiddle!
Hurrah , hurrah for the circus band!

And the red-plumed horses, oh, see them
prance
And daintily lift their hoofs and dance,
While beautiful ladies with golden curls
Are jingling their bridles of gold and pearls,
And close behind
Come every kind
Of animal cages great and small,
O how I wonder what’s in them all!
Here’s one that’s open and glaring there
Is the shaggiest snow-white polar bear I
Woof! but I wonder what we’d do
If his bars broke loose right now, don't you?
And O dear me!
Just look and see

That pink-cheeked lady in skirts of gauze
And the great big lion with folded paws!
O me I O my!
I’m glad that I
Am not in that lion’s cage, because
Suppose he'd open his horrible jaws !
— But look ! the clown is coming ! Of course
Facing the tail of a spotted horse
And shouting out things to make folks
laugh,
And grinning up at the tall giraffe
That placidly paces along and looks
Just like giraffes in the picture-books!
And there are the elephants, two and two,
Lumbering on as they always do!
The men who lead them look so small
I wonder the elephants mind at all
As they wag their queer
Long trunks, and peer
Through their beady eyes, — folks say they
know
No end of things, and I’m sure it’s so!
And you never must do a thing that’s bad
Or that possibly might make an elephant
mad,
For he’ll never forgive you, it appears,
And will punish you sure, if it takes him
years !
So do not stare
But take good care
To mind your manners, and always try
To smile politely as they go by!
But the camels don’t care if you laugh at
them
With their bumpy humps like a capital M,
They lurch and sway
And seem to say,
As they wrinkle their noses, long and gray,
“ This swaggering stride is quite the plan,
It’s the way we walked in the caravan!”
And now more cages come rumbling by
With glittering people throned on high;
So many spangles and precious things,
They surely must all be queens and kings!
They look so proud
Above the crowd,

O my, how fine it must feel to ride

On golden wagons that hide inside

Strange animals caught in cannibal isles

And brought in ships for a million miles!

But hark ! it's near

The end, for hear

That sudden screeching in piercing key!

The steaming, screaming cal-li-o-pe!

Just plain pianos sound terribly tame

Beside this one with the wonderful name,

And wouldn’t you love some day to sit

In a circus wagon and play on it?

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

How to arrange objects according to size?

Animal stacking blocks for
developing seriation skills.

Arranging objects or pictures according to size is important for cognitive development. This process is referred to as seriation skill in the early learning classroom environment. There are a number of advantages for learners who excel at this skill:

Students are better prepared for learning mathematics such as: the order of numbers, fractions, addition and subtraction.
Processes in logical thinking become developed, such as: predicting outcomes, understanding relationships between objects, and making assumptions that can be analyzed.

Toy companies have been making products for babies for years that encourage even infants to practice seriation skill sets. I've included photos here of an animal box set that I keep among the toys in my home.

My alphabet, animal stacking blocks are stacked according to size.

These elephants with big tusks and long trunks were fun for little ones to arrange from large, to larger, to largest etc...

Above and below are black and white prints of elephants and rhinos of varying size that I printed, cut and laminated for my classroom several years of ago and these are still in great condition. The laminated surfaces allowed me to wipe them off with a cleanser of some sort before using them over again during many different class periods. Pre-k teachers can make multiple sets of images such as these for youngsters to line up in order of size with only a bit of pocket change.

Students practiced arranging rhinos according to size in my classroom several years ago.

Below are wild animal clip art samples that visitors may use to make their own personal sets like the projects shown above. Pull the clip art into a Word Document and shrink or enlarge the beasts in order to have prints like the ones you see in my examples. I managed to print six different sizes using standard 8 1/2 x 11 inch typing paper. Start with the largest size and then scale the images down by dragging the corners of each image down to a slightly smaller version of the same image.

A tufted ape clip art image.

A giant sea turtle clip art image.

A striped zebra clip art image.

"A preschool student stacks cups to organize them by size. View more at earlymath.erikson.edu
Focus on the Child videos are taken from one-on-one interviews with individual children. The interviews are designed to elicit evidence of children's mathematical thinking. They are not teaching episodes or formal assessments."

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Color An Elephant

Elephants are ubiquitous in Western popular culture as emblems of the exotic because their unique appearance and size sets them apart from other animals and because, like other African animals such as the giraffe, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, they are unfamiliar to Western audiences. Popular culture's stock references to elephants rely on this exotic uniqueness. For instance, a "white elephant" is a byword for something expensive, useless and bizarre.

As characters, elephants are relegated largely to children's literature, in which they are generally cast as models of exemplary behavior, but account for some of this branch of literature's most iconic characters.

Many stories tell of isolated young elephants returning to a close-knit community, such as:

The Elephant’s Child from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories (1902)
Dumbo (1942)
The Saggy Baggy Elephant (1947).

Other elephant heroes given human qualities include:

Laurent de Brunhoff's anthropomorphic Babar (1935)
David McKee's Elmer (1989)
Dr. Seuss's Horton (1940).

More than other exotic animals, elephants in fiction are surrogates for humans, with their concern for the community and each other depicted as something to aspire to in stories like:

A Flower for Amborse by Anna and Edward Standon (1967).

Print and color my elephant below after watching the video of the elephant in this post. Look carefully at the color of his skin and how you might shade in different areas of his body and the rocks that surround him in order to make him look three dimensional. I have shaded parts of him already to help you get started.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Restored Antique Alphabet Prints

These restored antique alphabet prints would look charming in a child's nursery/bedroom or a homeschool classroom. I've cleaned and restored them for your next alphabet craft. Enjoy and read the Terms of Use before printing them out.

The above image for pinning please.

A was and Apple, an Archer, an Arrow. B was a Bird, Bear and a Barrow.

C for Cat and D for Dish, E for an Elephant, F for a Fish.

G for Goose and Ha for Ham, I for an Inn and J for Jam.

K for Kite and L for Light. M for the Moon and N for Night. O for Owl and P for Prattle,
Q for the Queen and R for Rattle.

S for Ship and T for Tap, U for an Urn and V for Vat. W for Windmill, for Watch & Wren,
X stands in English for no word but ten.

Y is for Yew, for Youth and for Yeast, Z is for Zebra a beautiful beast.

More Restored Alphabet Print by Kathy Grimm:

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Bake a Pink Elephant Circus Cake

Ella Elephant's easy to make (Of course, you must use Angel Flake.) Her trunk is long for peanut scooping, Her ears are big and always drooping! The pink elephant circus cake design was published by General Foods Corporation in 1959.

Start with two cooled 9-inch round cakes made from the recipe below. Cut a ring 11/2 inches wide from one layer. Cut out a third of the ring for her trunk.
Divide remaining piece of ring into four equal parts. Place uncut layer on a tray for the body. Use small circle for Ella's head. Add legs and a happy trunk.
Spread a fluffy pink frosting over cake and sprinkle Baker's Angle Flake coconut generously over the elephant. Use a big chocolate cookie for her ear . . . a gumdrop for the eye and a twist of licorice for the tail.

Ingredients:
2.5 cups cake flour
2 tsps baking powder
1⁄4 tsp salt
1⁄2 cup plus
2 tbsp butter
1 1/3 cups Redpath Granulated Sugar
3 tbsps frozen Pink Lemonade
1 tbsp lemon zest
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1 cup milk

Directions: Preheat oven to 350F. Grease 2 8" round pans and line bottoms with parchment paper. Sift flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Beat butter in mixer until fluffy. Gradually add sugar, scraping as needed. Add concentrate, zest and vanilla. Add eggs one at a time. Beat until smooth. On low alternate adding dry ingredients and milk (start and finish with dry ingredients). Bake cakes about 25mins, until toothpick comes out clean. Cool.

Pink Lemonade Frosting
500g Redpath Icing Sugar
2 cups shortening (can mix 1⁄2 butter, 1⁄2 shortening if you like)
1⁄4 cup Pink Lemonade Concentrate
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp meringue powder

Directions: Water as needed. Whip shortening (and butter, if using). Slowly begin adding icing sugar. Alternate between icing sugar and concentrate to keep frosting light and fluffy. Add vanilla. Add water if needed for spreading consistency.

More Ideas for Circus Party Fun: