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About the pagination of this eBook Due to the unique page numbering scheme of this book, the electronic pagination of the eBook does not match the pagination of the printed version. To navigate the text, please use the electronic Table of Contents that appears alongside the eBook or the Search function. For citation purposes, use the page numbers that appear in the text. B R I TA N N I C A DI SC OV ER Y LIBRARY 12 JU S T FOR FU N In this book, you will: have fun with new games and puzzles. discover strange and interesting animal facts. learn how to make a musical instrument and grow an indoor garden. find creative art projects to do, and lots more! C HICAGO L ONDON N EW D ELHI PARIS S EOUL S YDNEY TAIPEI T OKYO The Book of Me A book all about you and your family and friends is fun to make—and easy too! 1. Start with lots of colored paper, colored pencils, markers, crayons, and paints. You might also want to have some old magazines or catalogs to cut from. 2. Begin your book with a self-portrait—a picture of yourself on the first page. Your picture can be serious or funny. 3. Draw or paint the picture of yourself or, for fun, draw an empty face shape, then glue on different eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and hair cut from photos in magazines. 4. Write your name on the page that has your self-portrait. 2 5. On the next several pages draw, paint, or glue pictures that show everything about your life. Show the members of your family and your friends. Add pets if you have any. Include pictures of your favorite toy, favorite animal, favorite food, or a place you would like to go. 6. You might want to add pictures of your room, your neighborhood, and your school too. Add anything else you want to show about your world. 3 7. Add words to your book. Write them yourself or have a grown-up help you. Write a few words on some or all the pages that tell about what is on the page. 8. When you have finished making all your pages, staple them together or punch three holes down one side of each page. 9. Add fasteners or tie with yarn to hold the pages together. Now you have a book all about YOU! 4 5 Color a World On a nice day, take lots of colored chalk outside. All you need is a sidewalk or driveway and lots of imagination to make a very interesting and colorful world. 1. Begin by drawing a town. Draw streets, traffic lights and houses, rivers and parks and schools. 2. Draw the downtown and neighborhood areas. 3. Draw roads and railroad tracks leading out away from the starting point. 4. On the outer edges, draw farms and forests and fields. 5. For fun, use cardboard, old toys, or whatever you have handy to make things like bridges, mountains, and caves. 6. Use rocks for cars on the roads and leaves for sails on sailboats. Anything goes in this world! 6 7 Find the Match! Each thing below goes with one of the people on the opposite page. Can you find the matches? book toe shoes chef teacher firefighter spoon stethoscope horse hose jockey doctor ballet dancer 8 9 Grow a Garden in the House Even if you do not have a vegetable garden outside, you can grow many interesting food plants right in the house. All you need is a window that gets sunlight for at least part of the day. 1. Start your window garden with a sweet potato or even an ordinary potato. 2. Fill a see-through drinking glass or glass jar half full of water. 3. Place the thinner end of the potato in the water. Put the glass or the jar in a warm, dark place. A cabinet or a closet that isn’t much used is a good place. 10 4. Now be patient! It will take about 10 days for the potato to begin growing. 5. When it has begun to sprout, take the potato from its hiding place and put it in the sunny window. Look what’s happened to it! All the wavy sprouts will soon become leaves. 11 1 2 1 2 Carrot plants are so easy to grow that you could start two instead of just one. You can watch which one grows faster, just like watching a race! 1. Ask a grown-up to cut the tops off of two carrots. Each piece should be about two inches long including the short green stems. 2. Spread a layer of small stones over the entire bottom of a soup or cereal bowl. Put enough water in your bowl to cover the stones completely. 3. Set the carrot tops on the stones and put them in a sunny place. In a few days you will see several very tiny leaves beginning to grow from the carrot tops. Every day, count the new leaves that appear on each plant. Measure how tall the leaves of each carrot top have grown. If you keep watering the stones, a leafy plant will blossom from each carrot top after a few weeks. Which one is going to win the growth race? 3 12 3 Lemon, orange, or grapefruit seeds will give you another good plant, one with shiny, dark green leaves. 1. Soak a few of the seeds in water overnight. 2. The next morning, plant the wet seeds in a small pot filled with soil. Water the soil well and make sure it never dries out. 3. It will take a while, but after a few weeks, the seeds will sprout and a tiny green plant will burst through the soil. As it grows, you might find this plant to be the most beautiful one in your garden! 13 Make a Leafy Mobile 1 2 Spread the leaves on a sheet of waxed paper so that they are not touching. For extra color, sprinkle some tiny pieces of cut-up crayon around the leaves. Now cover the leaves with a second piece of waxed paper. Cover the waxed paper with newspaper or brown wrapping paper. 3 14 Collect several fallen leaves and some long, thin, bare branches. Leaves collected in the fall make the most colorful mobile, but green leaves look pretty too! Ask a grown-up to iron the newspaper or brown paper with an iron set on “low.” Peel off the newspaper layer and let the waxed paper cool. 4 Firmly tie two of your branches together with yarn so that they are crossed, like this: Make sure the yarn is extra long so that you can hang the mobile once the branches are tied together. When the waxed paper is cool, cut out each leaf. Leave plenty of room around the edges of each one. Punch a hole in the thickest part of the leaf, at the place where the leaf meets the stem. Using thread, yarn, or clear plastic craft thread, tie the leaves to the branches. Use different lengths of thread so that some leaves hang longer than others. 5 6 Hang your mobile in a window or above your bed and enjoy a little bit of indoor nature all year long! Add a few tiny bells if you want your mobile to be a wind chime too! 15