The Turkey's Lament by King Gobbler

I wonder what I can have done

To merit all this trouble--

Shut up where I can have no fun

And bent until I'm double!

This morning all the folks rushed out

And chased me over fences

And here and there and round about

Until I lost my senses.

I ran toward the farmer's wife

And thought she would befriend me,

But even she--upon my life--

Did nothing to defend me!

Instead, she grabbed me by a foot

With no consideration,

And in this prison I was put

Without an explanation.

The farmer's sharpening an ax;

The children talk of "dressing."

Oh, my, I wish I knew the facts!

These rumors are depressing!

But all the future I can see

Looks very, very murky.

Just now I think I'd rather be

A chicken then a turkey.

Quality Mardi Gras Crafts, Activities & Recipes

Mardi Gras Crafts, Activities and Traditions:

1. Mardi Gras coloring for kids from Crayon Palace blog
2. Tragedy and Comedy Garland - I'll update this later folks
3. Make a Mardi Gras Wreath - made with felt squares for a doll's house
4. Making a Mardi Gras Wreath with Deco Mask and a DIY Mardi Gras Bead Chandelier
5. Shoebox Float
6. Craft an elegant Mardi Gras half mask
7. Printable gems in color and gems kids can color on their own: emerald cut and crown cuts
8. Miniature Mardi Gras Float from a Shoebox
9. TP Roll Crafts of Kings: three versions
10. Handprint Mask Craft
11. Mardi Gras Feather Mask Craft
12. Fun Family Crafts - Mardi Gras crafts for kids of all ages
13. Mardi Gras paper bead craft for little ones
14. Construction Paper Feather Fans  - the sample is miniature, but these may be made child size
15. Draw Mardi Gras Performers
16. Paper Plate Jester Craft
17. Toilet Paper Roll Craft
18. Jester Jumping Jacks  - print and color green, gold, or purple in Mardi Gras colors
19. Pancake Day Activities
20. Papier Mache Hats
21. Making Masks From Recycled Materials
22. How to make "no-bake'' King's Cakes for your dolls
23. Craft captain's Mardi Gras caps for your doll's parade
24. Sculpt oven bake clay pancakes for your doll's Shrove Tuesday
25. Mardi Gras Bead Bracelets
26. Craft a beaded charger plate for a Mardi Gras party
27. Owl masks for Mardi Gras too!
28. Easy-peasy last-minute angel wings (no sew)
29. How to make Mardi Gras stick puppets for kids - 2 patterns

Mardi Gras Recipes & Sweets:

1. Mardi Gras King's Cake - Make Your Own Colored Sugar!
2. Mardi Gras Recipes from the Pocket Change Gourmet
3. Mardi Gras Smoothies

      "Learn how to make this festive Mardi Gras cake. Do you know what king cake is? Made famous in New Orleans, king cake is the classic ring-shaped Mardi Gras cake made for "fat Tuesday" with a lucky trinket baked right into the bread. In this video, you'll learn how to make a king cake. With this simple step-by-step recipes, you can make a traditional, delicious, properly decorated king cake with a cream cheese filling. You'll see a great trick for making sure the dough maintains its ring shape while rising and baking and see how to finish the king cake with a sweet lemon glaze and festive sprinkles of traditional Mardi Gras colors—purple, yellow, and green. Long live the king cake!" from Allrecipes

Cut & Paste Popped Corn On the Cob

      This simple little fall project is perfect for preschoolers. Teachers can download and print the templates that I have included below of a corn husk and cob. Transfer the patterns to heavy poster board to make stencils for young students to trace around. Select pale brown and yellow construction paper to create a corn cob like the one pictured on the right.

• Give each student a number two soft lead pencil to trace around the stencils with.
• Then they can cut out their husk and cob and paste the two together.
• Next, give each child a small white glue bottle and a fist full of popped corn to attach onto their construction paper corn cob.
• Let the project dry and pass around some additional popcorn for them to snack on!

Templates for a corn husk and a corn cob.

"This is a demo for the Farmer's Popcorn Cobs."

More Fun Projects and Poetry About Corn:

• Weave Indian Corn for Autumn Fun 
• Roasting Corn Poem
• "The Cornstalk's Lesson" Poem
• Festive Popcorn Treats
  

The Building Block Center

The building block center is essential in a pre-kindergarten classroom. 
Students recreate structural environments and explore concepts taught 
through math, geometry, and structural engineering in this center.

Why blocks are important for early learners to play with:

• Block Building and Make-Believe for Every Child by Strasser and Koeppel (pdf.)
• Back-to-Basics: Play in Early Childhood
• Constructive Play: A Value-Added Strategy for Meeting Early Learning Standards (pdf)
• learning library: block play studies

100 Creative Ways to Teach Numbers And Math Skills

Math And Art Integrated Studies:

1. Mythical Creatures: Integrating Art and Math
   
2. Number Portrait  
3. Delauney Marker Drawing 
4. Connect the Dot Geometry Designs
5. How to Make Your Own Paper Polyhedra
6. Bridging the Gap Between Math and Art (Slide Show)
7. free mandala designs to print
8. Paper-Plate Polyhedron (basic step-by-step tutorial)
9. Parabolic Line Drawing Exercise
10. Drawing Buildings from Deep Space Sparkle
11. Perfect Percent Patchworks
12. Fish Tessellation
13. 6th Grade: Frank Stella Protractor Series
14. An Exercise in Symmetry
15. Painted Paper Geometry Designs (idea)
16. Paper Towel Quilts - Teach Math!
17. Op Art Like Vaserely
18. Imbalance Contest Winners Announced!
19. Notan Expanding the Square
20. Paintings - Math Source
21. Abstract Numbers
22. 4th Grade: Circle Patterns (Rotational Symmetry)
23. Area Exercise from mathactivities.net
24. Prisms and Pyramids from mathactivities.net
25. Circle Activity from mathactivities.net
26. Reflections, Translations, and Rotations concept is a very ancient exercise in math used by art instructors for centuries: Art Exercises: , , , , , , ,

Math and Numbers For Early Learners Through Third Grade:

1. Trace the numbers with your own matchbox cars here and here
2. Clothespin Number Match Games: squares,
3. Muffin Cup Counting Games: buttons,
4. Teaching Addition With Popsicle Sticks
5. Little Pumpkin and Jack-O-Lantern Number Books
6. Using measuring cups to teach fractions
7. Learning ordinal numbers
8. Recognizing both written number words and number type: Egg carton game
9. Division Mosaics by Math Fact Fun
10. Number Hole Punch Games: no theme,
11. Beach Ball Toss: Addition Game
12. Craft Your Own Abacus
13. Creative Counting With Pom Poms
14. Number Matching Game
15. Montessori-Inspired Greater Than Less Than Alligator Math
16. Number Rings: A Cool Math Game
17. Golf tees & Playdough math
18. A car parking lot matching numbers game
19. Water Balloon Number Target Practice
20. Learning Coin Values with Games
21. Both Addition Number Family Eggs and Build a Number
22. Adding, number recognition and counting with fish themes
23. Free Happy Frog Math
24. Lego Addition and Subtraction Fun
25. Number boards for counting rocks
26. Montessori Ocean Math Activities at PreK + K Sharing
27. Bowling Math Games: Quaker Oats cans,
28. Telling Time With Sidewalk Chalk
29. Stamp-n-Design time telling game
30. Money Card Game
31. Place Value Beads
32. Dot Dabber Dice Game
33. Fair not Fair Money Game!
34. Place Value and Telling Time by Two Can Do It
35. Planting a Numbers Garden
36. Skip Counting: Counting by Fives with Turkey Hand Prints, Odds vs. Evens with cupcakes,
37. How much does it weigh? and Measuring with Legos and What kids learn when baking
38. Math Comparison Activities
39. Fraction strips paper and wooden versions of the same game
40. Teaching kids about money: educational money games for kids
41. How to teach kids about money - by annuity.org
42. Place Value and a Freebie
43. Teaching Place Value With Marshmallows and Cereal

Early Learning Calendar Activities:

• Make Paper Birthday Cupcakes
• Pre-K Calendar Journals
• Calender and Morning Board Routine

Logic Puzzles:

• logic puzzles from The Puzzle Baron
• All Logic Problems
• Enchanted Learning Logic Puzzles

Excellent Math Education Web Pages: Elementary Grades

• SIAM: Math Matters, Apply It!
• Everyday Mathematics
• Kitchen Math workbook series
• Home Math workbook series
• Money Math workbook series
• GeoMath 

Art and Math Video:

1. "The Art of Math" Project Entry Document
2. The Beauty Mathematics: Math & Art
3. String Art is Calculus
4. DIY 3D Geometric Paper Sculpture
5. Studio 360: Mathematical Art
6. Mathematics & art
7. Math in Art: Unique artistic renderings by mathematicians.
8. Reclaiming DaVinci: Art, Visualization, Mathematics
9. Drawing and visualizing math equations
10. Harmonograph in action
11. Sand Pendulum
12. Headspace Spatial Robot Kinetic Sculpture
13. Linkogram drawing machine
14. Paul the robot drawing Patrick
15. How to Make an Escher-esque Tessellation
16. 3D Origami Rainbow Vase

The Classic Art Meets Math Art Project
"Here's a quick tutorial on making a funky tessellation art project with just a pencil, protractor, and a sheet of construction paper. This particular way of doing it utilizes an equilateral triangle so that your finished shape will tessellate on a rotation." by Honeypaw

A Fall Leaf Craft for Two and Three Year Olds

      This simple fall leaf craft is perfect for two and three year old children. Parents or Day Care providers will need to first download and print the sweetgum template below. Cut out the template and trace it onto a black piece of construction paper. Then cut out the center of the leaf so that you will be able to adhere contact paper to the back of the leaf frame. Small children may then tear and stick yellow tissue papers to the tacky surface before an adult hangs their sweetgum leaf craft onto a window's surface.

The pictorial step-by-step procedure for cutting out the leaf frame.

The sweetgum template used in a simple fall craft.

Examples of the same craft process using pumpkins as a theme.

The Haunted Palace

The Haunted Palace

by Edgar Allan Poe

In the greenest of our valleys

   By good angels tenanted,

Once a fair and stately palace—

   Radiant palace—reared its head.

In the monarch Thought’s dominion,

   It stood there!

Never seraph spread a pinion

   Over fabric half so fair!

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

   On its roof did float and flow

(This—all this—was in the olden

   Time long ago)

And every gentle air that dallied,

   In that sweet day,

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

   A wingèd odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,

   Through two luminous windows, saw

Spirits moving musically

   To a lute’s well-tunèd law,

Round about a throne where, sitting,

   Porphyrogene!

In state his glory well befitting,

   The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

   Was the fair palace door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing

   And sparkling evermore,

A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty

   Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

   The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

   Assailed the monarch’s high estate;

(Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow

   Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)

And round about his home the glory

   That blushed and bloomed

Is but a dim-remembered story

   Of the old time entombed.

And travellers, now, within that valley,

   Through the red-litten windows see

Vast forms that move fantastically

   To a discordant melody;

While, like a ghastly rapid river,

   Through the pale door

A hideous throng rush out forever,

   And laugh—but smile no more. 

     "The Haunted Palace" is a 48-line poem was first released in the April 1839 issue of Nathan Brooks' American Museum magazine. It was eventually incorporated into "The Fall of the House of Usher" as a song written by Roderick Usher. Read more...

How To Draw a Halloween Cat

How to draw a Halloween cat by E. G. Lutz. Printable instruction sheet.

Once you've mastered drawing the simple cat above, why not try drawing a black cat on top of black paper like the one shown in the video below?

Draw Even More Black Cats:

• Draw black cats using vectors
• Time Lapse video of black cat using pastels

Feelings Faces Game for Halloween

      My little Jack-O-Lanterns are full of all kinds of emotions! Teachers will need to print two copies each of every sheet attached to the post below in order to play this Halloween matching game with their class.

      For younger students turn the cards face up on a carpet or table so that all of the emotions can be seen. Now ask each player taking a turn to match up one Jack-O-Lantern with it's twin and then talk about "how" the Jack-O-Lanterns are feeling. Ask the student about the incidents that make him or her feel angry, disappointed, frightened, sad, happy, excited or anxious etc...

      If your students are a bit older, in 1rst or 2nd grade, turn the cards face down during the game so that your students must also identify the matching abstract shapes of the pumpkins. 

      Let your students identify the feelings of the pumpkins on their own. Younger children will give general descriptions of their faces, older students may be more specific about the expressions. What is important about the game is that a students is able to actually match the identical facial features and shapes.

Teach young learners about emotions with these fun little free Jack-O-Lantern faces by Grimm.

Crying Jack-O-Lanterns shown crying. Print out the patterns twice to make this feelings face game by Kathy Grimm.

      Learn more about how to use facial expressions in order to develop social emotional skills watch the video below by Childswork Childsplay. You can purchase their game, "The Understanding Faces Game," here.

The Frost

By Hannah Flagg Gould.

The Frost looked forth, one still clear night,

And he said, "Now I shall be out of sight;

So through the valley and over the height

In silence I'll take my way,

I will not go like that blustering train,

The wind and the snow, the hail and the rain,

Who makes so mush bustle and noise in vain;

But I'll be as busy as they!"

Then he went to the mountain, and powdered its crest,

He climbed up the trees, and their boughs he dressed

With diamonds and pearls, and over the breast

Of the quivering lake he spread

A coat of mail, that it need not fear

The downward point of many a spear

That he hung on its margin, far and near,

Where a rock could rear its head.

He went to the windows of those who slept,

And over each pane like a fairy creaft;

Wherever he breathed, wherever he stepped,

By the light of the moon were seen

Most beautiful things. There were flowers and trees,

There were bevies of birds and swarms of bees, 

There were cities, thrones, temples and towers, and 

these

All pictured in silver sheen!

But he did one thing that was hardly fair--

He peeped in the cupboard, and finding there

That all had forgotten for him to prepare--

"Now just to set them a-thinking,

I'll bite this basket of fruit," said he;

"This costly pitcher I'll burst in three,

And the glass of water they've left for me

Shall "tchick" to tell them I'm drinking."

Tear and Paste Falling Leaves

      Young students will enjoy tearing and pasting fall leaves in order to recreate a lovely Autumn scene. The teacher will need to cut a simple tree trunk to cover the length of a large standard sized piece of grey construction paper. He or she will also need to cut rakes from dark brown construction paper in advance. I have included two patterns for the rakes below.

1. Give each young students brightly colored fall papers to tear for the leafs in this picture. 
2. After pasting their tree trunk onto their grey paper, students will need to paste and arrange brightly colored shredded papers on the tree, falling from the tree and in a large pile at the foot of the tree. This simple art project could take up to twenty five or thirty minutes depending upon the attention span of the participants. 
3. Play a selection of music during the activity to enhance the experience for your young students. 
4. After they have built up enough leaves under their fall tree, glue the ladder over them and leaning up against the tree. 
5. Don't forget to pinch the ends of the rake to form an angle. 
6. After the glue has dried, give the students a dark brown marker and encourage them to draw grooves into their tree trunk for added effect.

The young students at the early learning center are shredding fall colored papers for their simple rake pictures.
 I have included the simpler rake pattern below for those of you who would prefer to make a simpler version of
 the art lesson.

Look for more Autumn related art projects on our Early Learning Center's pinboard!

Create Fall Leaf Patterns

      This design project is best suited to students in fourth, fifth and sixth grades.

Materials:

• Black permanent markers, a variety of tip sizes
• 81/2'' x 11" white drawing paper
• extra scratch papers for cutting out stencils
• pencil and eraser
• a collection of fall leaves
• a variety of colored felt tip pens
• scissors

Step-by-Step Directions:

1. Students will first need to collect a minimum of seven leaves and trace around them to create their own stencils. 
2. After cutting out the patterns, students should then move them around an 81/2 inch x 11inch sheet of white drawing paper. 
3. The leaves should be large enough so that they will overlap a bit when traced onto the white drawing paper.       
4. Next the spaces which overlap should be filled in with solid black ink. 
5. Now challenge the students to draw a different patterned design in every remaining positive and negative space, neatly using black ink only.
6. Students should ink in select parts of the designs only.
7. After completing this part of the design project they may color in their fall leaf patterns with an assortment of colors representing an Autumn color palette.

More Black and White Design Inspiration:

• Scarecrow art lesson emphasizing line and patterns
• Line Drawing Art Lessons: Owls and Cats
• Aztec and Navajo Triangles
• Zentangle inchies with hearts example
• Line art city and clouds example
• Positive and Negative hands example
• Black and White House Sculpture examples
• 6th grade Geometric Composition Project

Above, the hand colored finished fall leaf, art assignment.