The following is our Go-Green Products family section that includes a wide range of entertainment. The age range is about 5 years of age and up. This section is a place that all parents will feel comfortable for their children to visit. The educational value is priceless. There is so little out there nowadays where a child can learn and have fun at the same time.
This family entertainment section is committed to restoring and advancing the diminishing interest in reading among our nation’s youth. Periodically we will incorporate games, stories, magic, jokes, riddles, mazes, fun facts, recipes, hidden objects, who dunnits, word wheels, comic strips, and so much more. The writers, illustrators and artists are among the nation’s best with a track record with a plethora of accolades that spans decades.
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by Diane Burns
How many references to dogs and cats can you find in this story? Answers on page 24.
One rainy Saturday, my detective friend Rex and I sat listening to records by our favorite mewsic group, The Elkhounds. The beagle section was blaring without a paws when the phone rang. It was Grandma Tabby.
“Help! All the collie-flower and shepherd’s pie is missing from my refrigerator,” said Grandma in her husky voice. “I haven’t anything to serve for dinner. Will you take the case?”
Rex switched off the stereo.
Thunder rumbled outside. Rain pelted the window. “We will get awfully wet,” he said, “but we must help.”
“You’re not kitten,” I said. “It’s the leash we can do.”
“Right,” agreed Rex. “We’ll collar the thief and retriever the goods.”
We jumped poodles all the way to Grandma’s house. Boy were we terriered!
Dingo, dongo! The doorbell chimed.
Grandma Tabby pointer to the bare refrigerator shelf.
“I was schnauzering on the sofa to rest mastiff joints,” she said. “When I woke up, the food was gone.”
“Look!” said Rex. “Someone’s spying!” A pug nose was pressed against Grandma’s pooch window.
“Someone is Pekingese,” I whiskered.
The shadow began to lynx away. Rex and I jumped and grabbed the shadowy intruder, a cat.
“Who are you? Where is Grandma’s food?” I barked.
“Well, panther me! I’m not a cheetah, honest. I am Grandma’s friend, Angora,” said the cat.
“She’s not lion,” Grandma said warmly. She hugged Angora.
“Don’t hound me,” whiskered Angora. “The food is right here in the clawset, see?”
Sure enough, there was the missing chow, safe and sound, inside a corgi-gated cardboard boxer.
I grinned at Angora. “Manx a lot! Our case is solved.”
Angora explained to Grandma: “You and I were going on a picnic today, remember? I took the food to surprise you, but it hasn’t stopped raining, so I guess the picnic is off. We kennel have a picnic when it is so wet outside.”
“Nonsense!” Grandma smiled.
She spread an Afghan hound on the floor and settered the food on it. “We’ll just have our picnic inside. Let’s set places for lots of extra guests.”
“What extra guests?” asked Angora.
“They will be here in a minute,” Grandma said, listening as the rain drummed harder on the woof. “Can you hear it? It’s beginning to rain cats and dogs!” she said.
WORD WHEEL
This fun-for-all challenge was invented by my wonderful, late mother, Darlene. Write down the words you can find and click on the answer page to see if you found as many words as we found. You may even find more than we found. You may want to challenge somebody to see who can find the words in the fastest time.
IT’S MAGIC
With our first magic trick, you hold a dollar bill right-side up in both hands. You slowly fold the bill. You never turn it over. When you unfold it, the bill mysteriously turned upside down.
1. Hold the bill with both hands. Fold the top half forward and down.
2. Fold the right half the the left.
3. Fold the right half to the left again.
4. To open the bill so that it is right-side up again, unfold the front half of the bill to the right.
5. Unfold the front half of the bill to the right again.
6. Now lift the front half of the bill. It's still right-side up. No magic has happened yet.
7. To make the bill magically unfold upside down, First do steps 1,2 and 3 to fold up the bill.
8. Repeat step 4.
9. Open the back half of the bill to the right.
10. Now lift the front half of the bill. It is now upside down.
It's a player’s skill at developing tactics that often give him/her the advantage to win. This game is better than tic-tac-toe, because rarely does a game end in a draw. It is also a game that you can make at almost anytime in about a minute.
1. Use the grid for this challenging game. Each of the two players uses three game markers. A players markers should all be the same, but different from the opponent’s. One player could be heads and one could be tails using coins.
2. The two players, in turn, begin to play a regular tic-tac-toe game, placing their markers in the squares, one at a time, in an effort to get three of their own markers in a row (across, up-and-down, or diagonally). If neither player has won after all six markers have been placed on the grid, the players continue, in turn, to move their own markers, one at a time, to an adjacent unoccupied space on the grid. You can move up-and-down or across, not diagonally. The first player to get three of their own markers in a row is the winner.
The Missing Letter
See if you can find the one letter missing from the alphabet.
1. Place butter in baking pan or heat- proof baking dish. Place pan on burner. Turn heat to low. Heat butter until melted.
Ingredients:
¼ cup (½ stick) butter
½ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 eggs
¼ cup milk
6 1-inch thick slices Texas toast
1 to 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
6. Remove pan from refrigerator 1 hour before baking. Let stand on the kitchen counter to reach room temperature.
2. Place brown sugar in small bowl. With fork, stir in cinnamon. Sprinkle mixture evenly over melted margarine in baking pan or dish.
3. Combine egg substitute and milk in glass pie plate. Mix with fork until blended
7. Preheat oven to 375 F.
8. Carefully place pan of French toast in hot oven. Bake 25 minutes.
9. Using oven mitts, remove pan from oven to wire cooling rack. With oven mitts, carefully remove foil from pan.
10. Return pan to hot oven. Bake for 15 minutes longer.
11. Using oven mitts, remove pan to cooling rack.
4. With fingers or fork, dip bread slices into egg mixture to coat both sides. Lay slices over sugar-cinnamon mixture in baking pan or dish. Pour any remaining egg mixture over the bread slices.
5. Cover pan with foil and refrigerate overnight.
12. Sprinkle French toast with powdered sugar.
This is a terrific breakfast treat, but to make it you’ll need to think ahead. You have to start this recipe the day before you serve it since it must be refrigerated overnight. Texas toast works the best but two slices of white bread put together will work fine.
A man driving an old wreck of a car drove up to a toll booth.
"One dollar," said the toll collector. "Sold" said the driver.
GAME WARDEN: You fishing?
FISHERMAN: No, just drowning worms.
VICKIE: My father can hold up ten cars and a truck.
RANDY: He must be the world's greatest weightlifter.
VICKIE: No, he's a traffic cop.
POLICEMAN: I'm sorry Sonny, but you don't need a permit to fish here.
SONNY: That's all right, thanks, I'm okay with a worm.
LISA: Can you spell blind pig?
NORMAN: B-l-i-n-d p-i-g.
LISA: No, it's b-l-n-d p-n. With two i's, he wouldn't be blind.
JUDGE: I shall give you a short sentence.
PRISONER: Thank you, Your Honor.
JUDGE: Ten years.
PRISONER: Ten years, That's not a short sentence.
JUDGE: Yes, it's only two words.
A lively young fisherman named Fischer fished for for fish from the edge of a fissure. A fish with a grin pulled the fisherman in. Now they're fishing the fissure for Fischer.
Fancy Nancy didn't fancy doing fancy work. But Fancy Nancy's fancy auntie did fancy Nancy doing fancy work. So Fancy Nancy did work for Fancy Nancy's fancy auntie.
Three gray-green greedy geese, feeding on a weedy piece. The piece was weedy and the geese were greedy.
The hairy hare stares at the hairier hare and the hairier hare stares at the hairiest hare. Here we have a three-hare stare affair.
There is a pie in my eye. Will I cry? Will I die? Though I'm shy, I won't lie. It might cause a sty, but I deny that I'll die or cry from the pie in my eye.
Harry Hunt hunts hairy hares. Does Harry Hunt hunt heavy hares? If Harry Hunt hunts heavy hairy hares, where are the heavy hairy hares Harry Hunt hunts?
With this experiment, you can fish at you kitchen table, on your back porch, or anywhere you choose. The following experiment takes patience and a steady hand.
You will need:
Next, quickly but gently place the remaining paper clips, one at a time, on top of the tissue. Then, tap around the edges of the tissue with a pencil until the paper sinks to the bottom of the bowl, leaving the “clippie fish” afloat.
6 paper clips (colored ones make fishing fun).
Large bowl of water
Facial tissue
Pencil
What to do:
Straighten one of the paper clips, shaping one end into a hook. Open facial tissue and lay across the bowl of water.
Now that your homemade fishing pond is stocked, use the hook that you made to see how many clippies you can catch.
What happens: If you are careful, you hook all five clippie fish. If not, the clippies escape to the bottom of the bowl.
Why: Surface tension, that invisible skin covering the water in the bowl, holds the paper-clip fish within reach of your hook. As long as you don’t break that tension, you can keep fishing and end up with the “catch of the day.”
Unfortunately, if you break the surface tension with your hook, the weight of the clips causes them to sink.
To add some excitement, have a fishing contest with a couple of buddies or family members. You can set a time limit or play a set number of rounds.
MAGIC EYE
Concentrate on staring at the picture below. Relax and take your time. Hint: Stare at the water. What do you see?
