How would you like to make a game of your very own with which you and your brothers and sisters or some of your friends can play? It is quite simple—just a great paper daisy with a slip of paper pasted on the under side of each petal. Upon each slip is written a sort of conundrum, the answer to which is the name of a plant or flower. If you can get a real daisy for a model, so much the better.

Fold a large sheet of linen writing paper diagonally so that you will have a square eight by eight inches. Bend it over again diagonally, and then again and again, so that it will have been folded four times in all. Now draw the outline of a daisy petal upon the folded paper (see Fig. 83), and cut it out through all the thicknesses. This will give you a sixteen-petaled daisy. The centre has next to be made. Cut from deep-yellow tissue paper eight circles three inches across, six circles two inches, and six an inch across. This is easily done by folding the paper into as many thicknesses as you wish circles of each size, so that you can cut through them all at once. Before separating the circles cut the edges into a fine fringe about three-eighths of an inch deep. Fold a piece of olive-green tissue paper in the same way as the white paper for the petals was folded, but once more, and cut it like Fig. 84. This is for the calyx. Next cut some slips of paper just large enough to be pasted on the underside of the petals and write on each a number and a conundrum from the following list:

  1. A public building in Philadelphia.
  2. A plant that rhymes with pansy.
  3. A foolish wild animal.
  4. A wise man.
  5. Fit for a king.
  6. A girl's name.
  7. A plant for Sundays.
  8. For thirsty folk.
  9. Several droves of sheep.
  10. Part of a pet.
  11. Two girls' names.
  12. Something that we know flies, though no one has ever seen it.
  13. A rosy athlete.
  14. A necessary article of food and a piece of china.
  15. A girl's name and a metal.
  16. An animal and a covering for the hand.

The following key, or answers to the conundrums, you will of course keep hidden until after the game has been played:

  1. Mint
  2. Tay
  3. Dandelion.
  4. Sage.
  5. Goldenrod.
  6. Sumach (Sue Mack).
  7. Jack-in-the-pulpit.
  8. Pitcher-plant.
  9. Phlox (Flocks).
  10. Cattail.
  11. Rosemary.
  12. Thyme.
  13. Scarlet runner.
  14. Buttercup.
  15. Marigold.
  16. Foxglove.

When the slips have each been pasted on a petal the daisy is put together in this way: Take a long, stout piece of wire, such as is sold for paper-flower stems; put the yellow circles all together, the larger ones at the bottom, then the medium ones and the smallest on top. Bend one end of the wire into a tiny ring and run the other end down through the centre of the yellow circles, then through the middle of the white circle with the petals on its edge, putting a touch of paste between the centre and the petals. Now paste a thin layer of cotton batting to the lower side of the petal-edged piece, at the centre, and run the wire stem through the middle of the green calyx, pasting the paper lightly to the cotton. Wind the stem with olive-green tissue paper cut in strips two inches wide, and cut from the same paper some leaves as much as possible like the little leaves of a daisy plant. The directions for playing this game are given in chapter X.