FREE HAND CUTTING, PAPER TEARING AND DRAWING FOR MARCH

-BYCarrie L. Wagner

"Red Riding Hood," "The Three Bears," and all those old, but ever new stories, are always welcomed by kindergarten and primary children. Pretty posters illustrating different stories may be made by the little ones.

The Red Riding Hood poster is easily made. The little girl and wolf are cut free hand, and the trees are cat from pale green folding paper, or they may be drawn with crayon, on manilla drawing paper, cut out and mounted. The little bushes in the distance are drawn with dark green crayon. The foundation for this picture is light blue constraction paper with

green construction paper mounted over one half for the ground.

Stevenson's "Rain Song,"

"The rain is raining all around

It rains on field and tree,

It rains on all the umbrellas here
And on the ships at sea,"

is illustrated in the other two posters. The tree and fence are drawn with crayon. The little figures are cut free hand. The boats are cut, and the water is torn in strips from blue coated folding paper, and mounted to form waves. The white of the wrong side of the paper which shows when torn forms the "white caps."

The black board border is appropriate for Easter.

Food will win the war. Don't waste it.

STOCKING DOLLS IN THE KINDERGARTEN Louise A. Whitcomb, Dallas, Texas

The value of home materials so successfully and practically used in the kindergartens at present cannot be over estimated.

The stocking dolls show home materials made vitally interesting and valuable to the child with little or no expense.

The following is a list of materials necessary for the stocking doll.

Materials necessary for each child:

1. Old white stocking (must be mended if necessary)

2. Cotton batting (filling)

3. White thread (coarse thread preferred) 4. Needle (large eyed)

5. Dress material (left over pieces at home) How to make the doll:

HEAD:-Fill toe of stocking with enough batting for doll's head then wind thread about and fasten securely.

BODY:-Fill to heel of stocking for body, sometimes more if necessary, then sew straight across and fasten thread.

LEGS:-Cut remainder of stocking to length desired for legs then cut up center almost to stitching at waist. Sew up either side of center where cut and fill with cotton batting. Sew across bottom of legs when finished.

ARMS:-Use that portion of stocking cut off to make the arms sew and fill and sew to doll.

FACE:-Water colors or colored crayons make a very effective face.

DRESS:-Cut out simple jumper dresses for the girls and clown dresses for the boys.

The dolls when completed are crudely made, but very effective and child-like. The children enjoy making them, and the boys are equally as interested as the girls. A number of days will be required to do this work, probably more, depending on the time alotted for the work.

Before taking the dolls home, the kindergartners enjoyed free play in the kindergarten with them. We used them in our doll house and in our doll dramatizations. We finally had a doll party in which all the family of dolls had their pictures taken. We used the kodak.

The use of home materials makes the work more vitally connected with the home and brings to the child a realization of the worth of home materials.

APRIL

BY MYRA A. BUCK

Who does not love an April day,

Tho' clouds o'er head are dull and gray? For soon the sun comes peeping through, And then the sky is bright and blue.

off

APRIL

By CARRIE IVIE Sheffield, Ala.

No. 2. Fold a heavy grade of linen or tough cream construction paper, measuring 16 in. in half, place cut-out-pattern on, with line A parallel with halfway fold of paper. Draw off as many girl-dolls and as many boy-dolls as desired-cut out along pencil lines-next draw face, hands and feet, on one side and cut hands loose from body from fingers to elbows of drawn side of figure only. Then fold on dotted lines at feet, paste head to head, skirt to skirt, leaving hands on face side free from figure at back.

The children like dresses best with front and back. Place shoulder seam of dress on fold of goods (a on boy's suit is fold of paper; b is shoulder seam), if only collar effect is desired in back. Be sure to cut placket long enough for heads to slip through easily.

We used this doll Easter when our subject was "Clothes and their care." The children gained worlds of pleasure and were quite artistic in designing, coloring and cutting clothes and hats.

We visited the millinery store and saw our kindergarten doll hat in the making, brought it home in a cute round hat box. Next day we made hat boxes for our paper-dolls' hats. Quaker oats box cut in thirds makes two boxes. Give children at older table round pieces of wall paper, 2 in. larger in diameter than oat box, with outer edge slashed towards center 1 in. and about 1⁄2 in. from the other slash. Cover slashes with good paste and fit over open end of oat box, then paste strip as wide as your box is deep around sides. Children may decorate top to suit their own taste.

My children painted hair and shoes on their dolls. This was a full week of interesting occupation work. The children at older table made a dressing table with drawer large enough to hold dresses. The drawer was top of spool box. Younger children made suit boxes.

Some dresses and suits were painted, others drawn in stripes, rings and checks. The children's own ideas drawn with dolly standing by watching.

My children painted hair and shoes of their dolls. (See illustrations on preceeding and following pages.)

TEACHER BENEFITS FROM SCHOOL SURVEYS is the title of a 24 page report by the Institute for Public Service, 51 Chambers Street, New York City-which culled from thirty more important survey reports the most helpful references to class room instruction. The Institute's director, William H. Allen, insists in the foreword that the lack of concreteness in the digest is due to the absence of concreteness in reports not to the digesters.

In the summary reports are quoted, verbatim, the Institute's only part being headlines like these: Life

lines for teachers of language; "Experiential contact" with survey words and realities; "On the whole" for teachers' consumption; First aid to teachers of history and civics; "Immediacy of dynamic doubt" and "Habit of confident judgment."

For

Footnote questions follow each quotation. example after a survey recommendation that pupils be taught only "what is actually for future social participation in his own social class" the Institute asks: "How does this ideal fit into the ideal of our nation in its war to make the world safe for Democracy?" After survey advice to cure spelling defects by the "immediacy of dynamic doubt" is the question "Why should a city pay several thousand dollars for dissertations that can be bought at book stores for less than it cost to print the above extract from a spelling survey?"

Copies of the report may be had for ten cents by addressing (name of magazine or Institute for Public Service, 51 Chambers St., New York City.)