Some nursery furniture for the paper doll house

      The two pieces of paper doll's furniture published today are a crib for the paper doll infant and a rocking chair for a somewhat older paper child. Cut out both pieces and paste them on cardstock to make them stiff enough to stand up. Fold on the lines indicated by the arrows and thrust the small tabs through the little slits. These small slits are more easily cut with the point of a knife than with scissors.
      If you have not made the paper doll's flat, which was described when the furniture series was begun, you may now make a paper doll's nursery from a box, which should be about eight inches long, seven inches wide and four inches high. Take away one side of the box so that you can arrange the furniture easily. The floor of the box should be stained with water color paints or colored with crayons. The walls may also be stained a pale color, pale blue, pink or yellow being the nicest for a nursery. If you prefer, you may paper the walls.
      Make a rug for the floor by pasting a square or oval piece of felt paper in the center of the room. A blue and white nursery is very pretty and you may have dark blue paper  for a rug. Cut a window out of one side of the box and curtain it with white tissue paper.
      The crib will need a mattress, which you can make of white tissue paper. It will take many thicknesses for a good soft mattress which will be comfortable for the paper doll infant. Tissue paper sheets are very nice, and then you should have a little coverlet of white lace paper over pale blue or pale pink. Make a little flat pillow of tissue paper.
      You can cut tiny pictures of animals from magazines and papers and frame them in white letter paper and paste them on the nursery walls.

"A" was once a counting apple pie too!

      Suse Macdonald illustrates this beloved poem, "A was once an apple pie" for children in her colorful, popular book. The poem, is an absurdly endearing classic by Edward Lear.

      I cut and pasted an apple pie pocket just for teaching simple math to the young students in our classroom. Teachers should probably laminate the pie and apples so that the game will endure for a couple of years at least. 

      I used tin foil for the pie's plate and painted, cut, and pasted construction paper for the pie top and the apples. These elements looked much like those illustrated inside Suse Macdonald's book. 

      Many people believe that it is a marketing device to produce multiple subjects using similar themes and illustrations. However, expert educators have proven that illustrating multiple academic subjects with similar visual cues helps to stimulate a student's memory, particularly if it is done within the context of a limited span of time. This is why preschool teachers consistently use the thematic presentation of multiple subjects. 

      Of course, it is much more entertaining for young students to count apples instead of dots on a page. Teachers try to make learning fun so that immature students will happily comply without too many complaints.

      For this apple game, students may be asked to add or subtract apples from the pie. The answer to their math problem is then what remains inside the pie pocket! All they need to do is empty and count the remaining apples to give the correct answer to the games question. This playful use of adding and subtracting pleasant visual aids greatly improves young appetites for math exercises. It also may ensure that little tummies will begin to grumble while playing it. 

      Why no serve up a healthy snack of chopped apples for an afternoon snack after reading the poem and playing the game?

• Apple themed poem page and links
• Bb is for bushel of apples coloring page
• Color picking apples in the orchard
• How to decorate a flat wooden apple ornament...

An Alphabet' by Edward Lear read by Murray Lachlan Young

Sunflower Craft Using Beans and Hands

This little fellow is preparing to assemble a giant sunflower. On the far right I have traced his hands on bright yellow construction paper. He is still too young to be able to cut the hand petals out by himself, but I try to get him excited about every step involved in the process anyway. My kindhearted companion patiently waits for me to cut out the petals while he plays in a large bin of beans on the right.

Now it is his turn to work on the sunflower. I poured a significant amount of glue onto the center of his sunflower. He patiently adds the beans one-by-one. This took him at least fifteen minutes and we discussed a great many wise things while he worked.

The following day, my little art student is ready to take his giant sunflower home.

View more sunflower crafts:

• Easy Paper Plate Sunflower Craft
• Sunflower Seed Flower Craft
• Seeded Sunflower at Pamela's Preschool
• Paper Plate Sunflower made with pom-poms

Name Recognition Encourages Early Reading

Just a few of the name tags belonging to students at our school.

      Our lead teacher hung a small magnetic board approximately two to three feet from the floor so that it would be accessible to small students. Next to it stands a little table with a basket. Inside the basket are name tags belonging to each student. Each name tag is representative of a theme that we celebrate every month. Everyday, upon arriving or leaving school, preschoolers are required to sign in and out by either removing or adding their name tags. This encourages the students to focus on the spelling of their names. It also introduces them to the concept that letters, when grouped together, have meaning. At the end of each month, students are allowed to take their name tag for that month home and are encouraged to play with it on their refrigerators.

Craft an Edible Jack-O-Lantern Bingo Game

      Students or teachers can draw a Jack-o-lantern on the inside of a paper plate with a black marker. Don't forget to give him a large toothy gin and number or letter each tooth as well. Color in the spooky pumpkin with bright orange and green markers. Then use candy corn to mark off the numbers or letters called randomly by the teacher. The first Jack-o-lantern to have his teeth restored is a bingo!

More Edible Games for Kids:

• Edible Bingo Game using Cheez-It Scrable crackers
• Sight Word Bingo
• Edible Valentine Cookie Tic-Tac-Toe 

More Candy Corn Crafts:

• Tear and paste a candy corn picture for preschool...
• Doodle a candy corn turkey, landscape, birds, butterflies etc...
  

Little Apple Rhymes and Poems

A Apple Pie.

B bit it.

C cut it.

D dealt it. 

E eat it.

F fought for it.

G got it. 

H hid it.

J joined it.

K kept it.

L longed for it.

M mourned for it.

N nodded at it. 

O opened it.

P peeped at it.

Q quartered it.

R ran for it.

S stole it.

T took it. 

V viewed it.

W wanted it.

X Y Z & 

Amperse and 

All wished for 

A piece in hand.

Apple Gathering by Georgina Rossetti

    I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple-tree
        And wore them all that evening in my hair:
    Then in due season when I went to see
            I found no apples there.

    With dangling basket all along the grass
        As I had come I went the selfsame track:
    My neighbours mocked me while they saw me pass
            So empty-handed back.

    Lilian and Lilias smiled in trudging by,
        Their heaped-up basket teased me like a jeer;
    Sweet-voiced they sang beneath the sunset sky,
            Their mother's home was near.

    Plump Gertrude passed me with her basket full,
        A stronger hand than hers helped it along;
    A voice talked with her through the shadows cool
            More sweet to me than song.

    Ah Willie, Willie, was my love less worth
        Than apples with their green leaves piled above?
    I counted rosiest apples on the earth
            Of far less worth than love.

    So once it was with me you stooped to talk
        Laughing and listening in this very lane:
    To think that by this way we used to walk
            We shall not walk again!

    I let my neighbours pass me, ones and twos
        And groups; the latest said the night grew chill,
    And hastened: but I loitered, while the dews
            Fell fast I loitered still.

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree, 1803

The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit, and always green;
The trees of nature fruitless be,
Compar'd with Christ the Appletree.

This beauty doth all things excel,
By faith I know, but ne'er can tell
The glory which I now can see,
In Jesus Christ the Appletree.

For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought;
I miss'd of all; but now I see
'Tis found in Christ the Appletree.

I'm weary'd with my former toil—
Here I will sit and rest awhile,
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the Appletree.

With great delight I'll make my stay,
There's none shall fright my soul away;
Among the sons of men I see
There's none like Christ the Appletree.

I'll sit and eat this fruit divine,
It cheers my heart like spirit'al wine;
And now this fruit is sweet to me,
That grows on Christ the Appletree.

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive;
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the Appletree.


Two Little Apples by Anonymous
Two little apples hanging on a tree,
Two little apples smiling at me.
I shook that tree as hard as I could.
Down came the apples, Mm! Mm! Good!

Craft A Half-Eaten Home!

Above is a perfectly sweet apple craft that teachers may hang any where inside the classroom to decorate for fall.
Apple units are frequently taught to preschool through second grade in the United States during the months of September and October.

This simple little apple craft is so easy to teach to young students. Every student should have the following supplies to complete it successfully:

• white cotton balls
• red, green and brown markers
• two white paper plates
• white glue
• scissors
• five green pom-poms 
• one pair of googly eyes
• one tiny red pom-pom for the worm's nose
• a hole punch
• a few black beans

Directions: Step-by-Step

1. Color the backsides of both white paper plates with a bright, ruby red marker.
2. Cut from the center of one plate, a large or small hole.
3. Paste onto the front white side of one paper plate, a cardboard stem and two leaves. These should be colored with markers before gluing onto the inside edge of the back plate.
4. Paste on top of this first plate the second. Apply glue to the circumference of the entire edge of the back plate. Both of the red sides of the paper plates should be facing away from each other in order to create a three dimensional apple.
5. Let the paper apples dry thoroughly.
6. Glue soft cotton balls to the interior of your apple shape to represent the white insides of an apple. 
7. Paste inside of the apple, a tiny, green pom-pom worm. 
8. Glue on the worm's googly eyes and tiny red pom-pom nose.
9. Glue a few little black bean inside the apple to represent 'seeds.'
10. Punch out a hole at the top of your apple's stem so that you may hang your clever little 3D paper apple plate anywhere inside of the classroom.

This is wormy apple craft includes soft, bumpy, and rough textures.

 Pat Jaswell of Jaswell Farms in Smithfield gives a lesson on apple picking to 27 children from Harrisville Preschool. The children and parents got to pick Macintosh apples, just ripe for picking at the 113-year-old farm on Swan Road. The farm orchard has 11 different kinds of apples and today they did their first pressing of apple cider.

Corpse Bride

      "Corpse Bride", often referred as "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride", is a 2005 stop-motion-animated horror musical film directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson. The plot is set in a fictional Victorian era village in Europe. Johnny Depp led an all-star cast as the voice of Victor, while Helena Bonham Carter voiced Emily, the title character. Corpse Bride is the third stop-motion feature film produced by Burton and the first directed by him (the previous two films, The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, were directed by Henry Selick). This is also the first stop-motion feature from Burton that isn't distributed by Walt Disney Pictures.

      The film was nominated in the 78th Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature, but was beaten by Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which also starred Helena Bonham Carter. It was shot with a battery of Canon EOS-1D Mark II digital SLRs, rather than the 35mm film cameras used for Burton's previous stop-motion film The Nightmare Before Christmas.

      In an unnamed Victorian Era European village, Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp), the son of nouveau riche fish merchants, and Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson), the neglected daughter of hateful aristocrats, are getting prepared for their arranged marriage, which will raise the social class of Victor's parents and restore the wealth of Victoria's penniless family. Both have concerns about marrying someone they do not know, but they fall instantly in love when they first meet. After the shy, clumsy Victor ruins the wedding rehearsal and is scolded by Pastor Galswells (Christopher Lee), he flees and practices his wedding vows in the nearby forest, placing the wedding ring on a nearby upturned tree root.

Theatrical Release Poster.

      The root turns out to be the finger of a dead girl clad in a tattered bridal gown, who rises from the grave claiming that she is now Victor's wife. Spirited away to the surprisingly festive Land of the Dead, the bewildered Victor learns the story of Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), his new "bride," murdered years ago on the night of her secret elopement. Emily, as a wedding gift, reunites Victor with his long-dead dog, Scraps. Meanwhile, Victoria's parents hear that Victor has been seen in another woman's arms, and become suspicious.

      Wanting to reunite with Victoria, Victor tricks Emily into taking him back to the Land of the Living by pretending he wants her to meet his parents. She agrees to this and takes him to see Elder Gutknecht (Michael Gough), the kindly ruler of the underworld, to send him and Emily temporarily to the Land of the Living. Once back home, Victor asks Emily to wait in the forest while he rushes off to see Victoria and confess his wish to marry her as soon as possible, to which she gladly returns his feelings. Emily soon arrives and sees the two of them together and, feeling betrayed and hurt, drags Victor back to the Land of the Dead. Victoria tells her parents that Victor has been forcibly wed to a dead woman, but they believe she has lost her mind and lock her up in her bedroom. She escapes her room by window and rushes to Galswells to find a way helping Victor, but fails. With Victor gone, Victoria's parents decide to marry her off to a presumably wealthy newcomer in town named Lord Barkis Bittern (Richard E. Grant), who appeared at the wedding rehearsal, against her will.

      Emily is heartbroken by Victor's deception. Victor, however, apologizes for lying to her, and the two reconcile while playing the piano together. Shortly after, Victor's family coachman appears in the afterlife (having recently died) and informs Victor of Victoria's impending marriage to Lord Barkis. At the same time, Emily learns from Elder Gutknecht that because marriage vows are only binding until "death do you part" and death already parts them, her supposed marriage to Victor was never valid. In order for their marriage to become valid, Victor must repeat his vows in the Land of the Living and willingly drink poison - thus joining her in death. Overhearing this, and fretting about having lost his chance with Victoria, Victor agrees to die for Emily. All of the dead go "upstairs" to the Land of the Living to perform the wedding ceremony for Victor and Emily. Upon their arrival, the town erupts into a temporary panic until every living person recognizes each others' loved ones from the dead and they have a joyous reunion under the bizarre circumstances.

     After a quarrel with Lord Barkis - and realizing he was only after her supposed money - Victoria follows the procession of dead to the church. As Victor prepares to drink the cup of poison to kill himself, Emily notices Victoria and has second thoughts, realizing that she is denying Victoria her chance at happiness the same way it was stolen from her. Lord Barkis interrupts them, and Emily recognizes him as her former fiance - who is revealed to be the one who murdered her for her dowry. Lord Barkis tries to kidnap Victoria at sword point, but Victor stops him and the two men duel. Emily intercedes to save Victor, and Lord Barkis mockingly proposes a toast to Emily claiming she's "always the bridesmaid, never the bride!", and accidentally drinking the cup of poison. The dead (now able to intercede as he's dead) drag the "new arrival" away for punishment.

      Emily sets Victor free of his vow to marry her, giving the wedding ring back to Victor and her wedding bouquet to Victoria before exiting the church. As she steps into the moonlight, she transforms into hundreds of butterflies, presumably finding peace, as Victor and Victoria look on.

^{More Related Content:}

• Official website
• Interview Helena Bonham Carter
• Johnny Depp in Corpse Bride Interview
• Tim Burton Interview for Corpse Bride

The Story of "Stingy Jack"

      Stingy Jack, perhaps also known as Jack the Smith, Drunk Jack, and Jack of the Lantern, is a mythical character apparently associated with All Hallows Eve. It is common lore that the "jack-o'-lantern" is derived from the character.

      As the story goes, several centuries ago amongst the myriad of towns and villages in Ireland, there lived a drunkard known as "Stingy Jack". Jack was known throughout the land as a deceiver, manipulator and otherwise dreg of society. On a fateful night, the devil overheard the tale of Jack's evil deeds and silver tongue. Unconvinced (and envious) of the rumors, the devil went to find out for himself whether or not Jack lived up to his vile reputation.

      Typical of Jack, he was drunk and wandering through the countryside at night when he came upon a body on his cobblestone path. The body with an eerie grimace on its face turned out to be the Devil. Jack realized somberly this was his end; the devil had finally come to collect his malevolent soul. Jack made a last request: he asked the devil to let him drink ale before he departed to hell. Finding no reason not to acquiesce the request, the devil took Jack to the local pub and supplied him with many alcoholic beverages. Upon quenching his thirst, Jack asked the devil to pay the tab on the ale, to the devil's surprise. Jack convinced the devil to metamorphose into a silver coin with which to pay the bartender (impressed upon by Jack's unyielding nefarious tactics). Shrewdly, Jack stuck the now transmogrified devil (coin) into his pocket, which also contained a crucifix. The crucifix's presence prevented the devil from escaping his form. This coerced the devil to agree to Jack's demand: in exchange for the devil's freedom, the devil had to spare Jack's soul for 10 years.

New York Tribune, 1915.

      Ten years later to the date when Jack originally struck his deal, he found himself once again in the devil's presence. Same as the setting before, Jack happened upon the devil and seemingly accepted it was his time to go to hell for good. As the devil prepared to take him to the underworld, Jack asked if he could have one apple to feed his starving belly. Foolishly the devil once again agreed to this request. As the devil climbed up the branches of a nearby apple tree, Jack surrounded its base with crucifixes. The devil, frustrated at the fact that he been entrapped again, demanded his release. As Jack did before, he made a demand: that his soul never be taken by the devil into hell. The devil agreed and was set free.
       Eventually the drinking and unstable lifestyle took its toll on Jack; he died the way he lived. As Jack's soul prepared to enter heaven through the gates of St. Peter he was stopped. Jack was told that because of his sinful lifestyle of deceitfulness and drinking, he was not allowed into heaven. The dreary Jack went before the Gates of Hell and begged for commission into underworld. The devil, fulfilling his obligation to Jack, could not take his soul. To warn others, he gave Jack an ember, marking him a denizen of the netherworld. From that day on until eternity's end, Jack is doomed to roam the world between the planes of good and evil, with only an ember inside a hollowed turnip ("turnip" actually referring to a large swede) to light his way.

More Related Content:

• History of Stingy Jack

Arsenic and Old Lace

      "Arsenic and Old Lace" is a 1944 film directed by Frank Capra based on Joseph Kesselring's play of the same name. The script adaptation was by twins Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein. Capra actually filmed the movie in 1941, but it was not released until 1944, after the original stage version had finished its run on Broadway. The lead role of Mortimer Brewster was originally intended for Bob Hope, but he couldn't be released from his contract with Paramount.

      Capra had also approached Jack Benny and Ronald Reagan before going with Cary Grant. Boris Karloff played Jonathan Brewster, who "looks like Karloff", on the Broadway stage, but he was unable to do the movie as well because he was still appearing in the play during filming, and Raymond Massey took his place.

      In addition to Grant as Mortimer Brewster, the film also starred Josephine Hull and Jean Adair as the Brewster sisters, Abby and Martha, respectively. Hull and Adair as well as John Alexander (who played Teddy Roosevelt) were reprising their roles from the 1941 stage production. Hull and Adair both received an eight-week leave of absence from the stage production that was still running, but Karloff did not as he was an investor in the stage production and its main draw. The entire film was shot within those eight weeks. The film cost just over $1.2 million of a $2 million budget to produce.

Despite having written several books describing marriage as an "old-fashioned superstition", Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) falls in love with Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane), who grew up next door to him in Brooklyn, and, on Halloween day, they marry. Immediately after the wedding, Mortimer visits the eccentric but lovable relatives who raised him and who still live in his old family home: his elderly aunts Abby (Josephine Hull) and Martha (Jean Adair), and his brother Teddy (John Alexander), who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt. Each time Teddy goes upstairs, he yells "Charge!" and takes the stairs at a run, imitating Roosevelt's famous charge up San Juan Hill.

Theatrical release poster

      Mortimer finds a corpse hidden in a window seat and assumes that Teddy has committed murder under some delusion, but his aunts explain that they are responsible ("It's one of our charities"). They explain in the most innocent terms that they have developed what Mortimer calls the "very bad habit" of ending the presumed suffering of lonely old bachelors by serving them elderberry wine spiked with arsenic, strychnine and "just a pinch of cyanide". The bodies are buried in the basement by Teddy, who believes he is digging locks for the Panama Canal and burying yellow fever victims.

      To complicate matters further, Mortimer's brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) arrives with his alcoholic accomplice, plastic surgeon Dr. Herman Einstein (Peter Lorre). Jonathan is a murderer trying to escape the police and find a place to dispose of the corpse of his latest victim, a certain Mr. Spenalzo. Jonathan's face, as altered by Einstein while drunk, looks like Boris Karloff's in his makeup as Frankenstein's monster. This resemblance is frequently noted, much to Jonathan's annoyance. Jonathan, upon finding out his aunts' secret, decides to bury Spenalzo in the cellar (to which Abby and Martha object vehemently, because their victims were all nice gentlemen while Mr. Spenalzo is a stranger and a "foreigner") and soon declares his intention to kill Mortimer.

      While Elaine waits at her family home next door for Mortimer to take her on their honeymoon, Mortimer makes increasingly frantic attempts to stay on top of the situation, including multiple efforts to alert the bumbling local cops to the threat Jonathan poses, as well as to get the paperwork filed that will have Teddy declared legally insane and committed to a mental asylum (giving him a safe explanation for the bodies should the cops find them, and preventing his aunts from creating any more victims because they will no longer have any place to bury the bodies). He also worries that he will go insane like the rest of the Brewster family. As he puts it, "Insanity runs in my family, practically gallops!" While explaining this to Elaine, he claims they've been crazy since the first Brewsters came to America as pilgrims.

      But eventually Jonathan is arrested, while Teddy is safely consigned to an asylum and the two aunts insist upon joining him. Finally, Abby and Martha inform Mortimer that he is not biologically related to the Brewsters after all: his real mother was the aunts' cook and his father had been a chef on a steamship. In the film's closing scene, after lustily kissing Elaine and before whisking her away to their honeymoon, he gleefully exclaims "I'm not a Brewster, I'm a son of a sea cook!" This is a Hollywood Production Code bowdlerization of the line in the play: "I'm a b*****d!"

More Related Content:

• Arsenic and Old Lace at the Internet Movie Database
• Arsenic and Old Lace at AllRovi
• Arsenic and Old Lace at the TCM Movie Database
• Historic reviews, photo gallery at CaryGrant.net
• Arsenic and Old Lace on Screen Guild Theater: November 25, 1946

Costumes Worn On Halloween

      Halloween costumes are costumes worn on or around Halloween, a festival which falls on October 31. The Halloween costume has a relatively short history. Wearing costumes has long been associated with other holidays around the time of Halloween, even Christmas. Among the earliest references to wearing costumes at Halloween is in 1895, where "guisers" are recorded in Scotland, but there is almost no mention of a costume in England, Ireland, or the United States until 1900. Early costumes emphasized the pagan and gothic nature of the holiday, but by the 1930s costumes based on characters in mass media such as film, literature, and radio were popular. Halloween was originally promoted as a children's holiday, and as a means of reining in the wicked and destructive behavior of teenagers. Early Halloween costumes were aimed at children in particular, but after the mid-20th century, as Halloween increasingly came to be celebrated by adults, the Halloween costume was worn by adults as much as children.

      Although Halloween is often claimed to be a cultural descendant of the Celtic festival of Samhain, such claims are generally not considered either historically accurate or scholarly. In particular, the custom of dressing up in costumes and going "guising" or trick-or-treating at Halloween developed from Christian customs created in Western Europe around the 15th century. Guising at Halloween in Scotland is recorded in 1895, where masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit and money. The practice of Guising at Halloween in North America is first recorded in 1911, where a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario reported children going "guising" around the neighborhood.

      The holidays of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day were often celebrated with costume parades, wild parties, and licentiousness of all sorts. In the 18th century in the United Kingdom, Halloween was celebrated in rural areas by farmers as a fertility rite, while in cities it had a Carnival-like atmosphere. But as Halloween was transported to the United States by waves of European immigrants, the licentious and rowdy elements of Halloween were domesticated to conform with the emerging Victorian era morality. Halloween was made into a private rather than public holiday, celebrations involving liquor and sensuality de-emphasized, and only children were expected to celebrate the festival.

These little ones are dressing in costume for All Saints Day at their private Catholic school. This costume celebration is fast becoming a popular alternative to traditional Trick-or-Treating. This is in part because of the current trends towards gore and inappropriate adult content surrounding the secular culture of Halloween. Guising on All Saint's Day also emphasizes the imitation of positive, historical characters throughout Christian church history.

      While wearing costumes at Halloween is recorded in Scotland in 1895, there is little evidence of costumes in England, Ireland, or the United States prior to 1900, however. Early Halloween costumes emphasized the pagan and gothic nature of Halloween, and were aimed primarily at children. Costumes were also made at home, or using items (such as make-up) which could be purchased and utilized to create a costume. But in the 1930s, A.S. Fishbach, Ben Cooper, Inc., and other firms began mass-producing Halloween costumes for sale in stores as trick-or-treating became popular in North America.

      Halloween costumes in popular culture are often designed to imitate supernatural and scary beings. Costumes are traditionally those of monsters such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, skeletons, witches, goblins, trolls, devils, etc. or in more recent years such science fiction-inspired characters as aliens and superheroes. There are also costumes of pop culture figures like presidents, athletes, celebrities, or characters in film, television, literature, etc. Another popular trend is for women (and in some cases, men) to use Halloween as an excuse to wear sexy or revealing costumes, showing off more skin than would be socially acceptable otherwise. Young girls also often dress as entirely non-scary characters at Halloween, including princesses, fairies, angels, farm animals and flowers.

      Halloween costume parties generally fall on or around October 31, often falling on the Friday or Saturday prior to Halloween. The wearing of costumes for the purpose of "Trick-or-Treating" or guising, is traditionally done on the eve of Halloween and the tradition of wearing costumes for All Saint's Day generally is done either on All Saint's Day or on a school day that has been chosen for that purpose in parochial schools.

• All Saints Day by James Russell Lowell
• Fall - Time Fun! 
• How Halloween Came to Be Celebrated in Christendom
  

Improvised Masquerade Costumes

A tiny belle of 1830.

      With so many children, the idea of "dressing up" even of having or of going to a masquerade party, is likely to be a thing of shot notice. Often the jolliest parties of all are those got upon a day's notice.

      The costume part of the program is, of course, the most delightful part of it--unless you don't happen to have one, or find, to your dismay, that you've outgrown yours. If there is plenty of time, there is no trouble, but many a youngster has cried herself to sleep over having to decline an invitation to a Halloween party because the necessary costume was lacking.

      For that matter, a creditable costume can be improvised out of material at hand, and the youngster sent away, happy in her disquise.

      Her older sister's red party cloak, with its full hood pulled down over her face turns her into a quaint Little Red Riding-Hood as ever graced the pages of a beloved old fairy-tale book. Give her a little arm, apparently filled with the goodies she was to take to her grandmother when she set out upon that memorable walk. If the party chances to be a birthday party, the basket may contain real goodies, to be presented to the little hostess.

With A Kimono and Sash

      A fascinating Pierrot costume may be made of the small boy's white pajamas, if you sew great fluffy choux of scarlet or of blue or yellow mosquito netting (or the finer net) down the front. Make a "sugar-loaf cap," stuff it full of tissue paper, so that it will keep its shape, and sew another ruff upon the tip end of it. If you've time sew bands of color about the sleeves and trousers and the funny loose jacket.

Turned into a Japanese
Maiden

      With a figured kimono and a sash, and attractive little Japanese lady may be evolved in short order. If the kimono is her own, so much the better; if it's a grown-up kimono, turn up the hem until it is the right length, and baste the new hem in place over a wadding of cotton. Treat the sleeves in the same way. The body part may be drawn in as you please under the "obi," which is nothing in the world but her own sash tied in Japanese fashion. Twist her curls high on her head and stick through them tiny Japanese fans, or the tiny lanterns made to dangle at the end of a long stick. let her carry a folding fan, of course.

      For a very tiny boy, a pretty variation of the Pierrot costume consists of a funny, full affair, all in one piece-sleeves and trouser-legs as funny and full as the rest, but gathered in at wrists and ankles by hands and bows of bright ribbon. Big stars, cut from paper the color of the ribbon, are pasted onto the costume. 

To Make The Pierrot Buff

      The famous Pierrot's ruff is made of netting cut about twelve inches wide and gathered in the center. Make it as full as you can, pushing the gathers together until they are tight upon the thread. Then the ruff becomes as fluffy a thing as you want.

      A short red or yellow skirt, with a bolero borrowed from your store, will be needed to make your gipsy costume. If you've a scarf (those gay, embroidered piano scarfs are splendid for the purpose and a Roman sash is most effective), tie it around her waist, pulling it a little low and knotting the ends at the left side in front. Heap all the strings of beads and bracelets you can upon her, and if you've a bright silk handkerchief, cover her hair with it. The best way to do that is to lay it on flat, turning back the hem a couple of inches or so across her forehead and fastening at each side with a big round broach.

A gypsy, Little Red Riding Hood and a Quaint
little Quaker Lady

      For a little Irish lass a skirt of bright green with a full white blouse, open at the throat in a sort of V, may be run up in a little while. Tie a red bandana about her waist, and another about the throat, fasenting the knot to the end of the V.

      The "Old Virginia girl" and 1830 costumes are easily made of flowered cretonnes or of the crepe papers that come in such variety.

      Those crepe papers by the way make stunning costumes if you've time to devote the best part of a day to the making. The prettiest flower costumes topped off with a big flower for a hat; Mother Goose and her tribe of nursery fold: night and morning and twilight; witches and elves: children of other nations--there is no end to the costumes which can be made of them. If you make the paper costume upon a foundation of muslin, or. at least sew it upon a belt of strong muslin, with bands outlining the neck and ending the sleeves, there's little danger of the dress sagging or worse still, of pulling apart.

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