Take an Animal by the Tail

If you need a clue to solve this puzzle, just look at the "tail" of each word. The beginning letter for each animal is the ending letter from the one before it. Read the clues below each word to help you guess the animal names.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ o

An animal that lives in Australia

o _ _

Nocturnal animal. Known for being wise.

l _ _ _ _ _ d

One of the big cats. Drags its prey into trees.

d _ _ r

Bambi was one of these.

r _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ s

This animal has a horn on its nose.

s _ _ _ e

A cold-blooded animal.

e _ _ _ _ _ _ t

He doesn't need to pack a trunk.

t _ _ _ r

The stripes on this big cat will help camoflage him.





Answers: 1. kangaroo 2. owl 3. leopard 4. deer 5. rhinoceros
6. snake 7. elephant 8. tiger

What Happens in Autumn?

On the calendar, autumn is the third season of the year. Autumn is a time of change. The green color of summer gives way to the yellow, red, and browns of autumn. Fruits and nuts are harvested, the days become shorter, and animals prepare for winter.

What happens to the trees in autumn?

A substance called chlorophyll makes leaves green. In autumn the tree stops making chlorophyll so the green in the leaves fade. The colors, which were hidden by the green, can now be seen. During the late fall, most of the leaves of deciduous trees fall off. This is nature’s way of protecting the tree during the winter months. In the winter, trees get very little water through the roots. If the leaves remained, water would escape as water vapor through the tiny pores in the leaves. This way the tree can conserve water and stay alive. Pine trees do not lose their needles. This is because needles are narrow and covered with wax, so less water escapes from them.

Why do the days get shorter during autumn?

Our planet travels around the sun in a huge circle called an orbit. It takes one year for the Earth to complete one orbit. Because of this, each day has a period when it is light and a period when it is dark. When the Earth faces the sun, it is daylight and when it is turned away from the sun, it is night. For most of the year, day and night are different lengths. However, each autumn there is a day with twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness. This happens on September 22 or 23 in the Northern Hemisphere. It is called the autumn equinox. After that date the nights gradually become longer than the days.

What happens to animals and birds during autumn?

During autumn there is a lot of food available as seeds and fruits ripen. Animals store up as much food as they can before winter comes. Squirrels collect nuts, mice collect seeds, and jays collect acorns. Animals eat as much as they can in autumn to store up fat reserves in their body before winter.

Insects are very active in summer, but they become sluggish during the cooler fall months. Some of the strong fliers, such as butterflies and dragonflies will migrate to warmer climates. Most insects cannot or do not fly to warmer climates. They must find ways of surviving winter where they are. Ladybugs hide in cracks of trees; butterflies will find a woodshed or attic to hide in. Crickets and grasshoppers die before winter comes, but they have already laid their eggs, which will grow into new insects in the spring.

Birds are stronger flyers than insects and many of them flee the oncoming winter. It is the scarcity of food and not the cold that affects them most. Insect eating birds must leave their homes in autumn because their food disappears.

Many changes occur during autumn. It is a favorite season for many people because of the beautiful colors and pleasant weather. What is your favorite season?

You Can Say That Again! - Language Trivia

You may speak the English language, but you might not know these cool facts about your native tongue.

There is no word that rhymes with orange, month, silver or purple.

There are approximately 6,000 actively spoken languages in the world today.

Shakespeare invented the word “assassination”.

“One thousand” contains the letter A, but none of the words from one to nine hundred ninety-nine has an A.

Rhythms” is the longest English word without vowels.

“Four” is the only number whose number of letters in the name equals the number.

Colors as Similes

It is fun to think of similes in terms of colors. This may be an easy way to begin learning about similes. Try to think of a word to fill in each blank. You should be able to think of one word to describe each of the colors below.


The shirt was as RED as _________________________.

The ball was as BLUE as ________________________.

Her eyes were as GREEN as _____________________.

The dog was as BROWN as _______________________.

The backpack was as BLACK as _____________________.

His jacket was as YELLOW as _______________________.

The paper was as WHITE as ___________________________.

The sign was as ORANGE as ____________________________.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain in 1881. He was not a good student in school and he had trouble learning to read and write. Pablo always loved art. He had his first art exhibit when he was thirteen.

At the age of eighteen, Pablo moved to Paris. He was very poor and often worked on his paintings by the light of a single candle. The work that Pablo did while he lived in Paris from 1901-1904 is known as his “blue period”. This is because everything he painted came out sad and blue.

In 1904, he entered his “pink period” and the subjects of his art as well as the colors of his paintings appeared happier. It was during this time that Pablo married his first wife. He was married twice and had four children during his lifetime.

Pablo helped create a new style of art called Cubism beginning in 1908. The paintings he created appeared to be made up of “little cubes”. One of his most famous painting using this technique is called the “Three Musicians” painted in 1921. His favorite subjects to paint were musical instruments, still-life objects and his friends.

During the 1930’s, Picasso added surrealism to his paintings. His paintings seem to have double images and dream-like qualities. He also worked on sculptures during this time.

Pablo Picasso is considered to be one the greatest artists of the 20th century. He created over 20,000 works during his lifetime and died at the age of ninety-one on April 8, 1973.

Art Exercises to Try at Home:

1. Create a collage person by using scraps of fabric and paper cutouts. Arrange the shapes into a pleasing vertical arrangement and glue them to your paper. Add a face, arms and legs to create a person. The collage person should be distorted like the people in Picasso’s paintings. (Shapes can overlap and fabric or interesting materials such as yarn or buttons may be added.)

2. Try painting an entire picture in a blue palette. Think of something that makes you sad and try to mimic Picasso’s “blue period”. Blue is known as a cool color because of the feeling it evokes. Other cool colors are green and purple.

3. Try to remember an unusual dream that you have had. Draw a picture of what you can remember. It is o.k. if it doesn’t seem to make any sense.

4. Picasso liked to make pictures of faces that were distorted. Draw three large oval shapes. Create three faces using cut out shapes of different noses, ears, mouths, etc. Put the faces together in unusual ways. The eye can be below the mouth or the nose can go where the ear normally would. What do you think of your artwork? Would you ever create art like this on your own? Why or why not?

5. Picasso went to the circus three or four times a week. This was during his “Rose Period.” Draw a picture of a circus scene. Use mainly pink and blue colors in your picture.