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A Children's Daisy Party
ET the children make the invitations they send out for their own daisy party.
On heavy water color paper they may draw and cut out simple outlines of daisies about ten petals around a center which is then colored yellow with crayons. Each petal may hold one or two words of the invitation, thus: Will daisy - you come to party on Saturday three? - Betty and John. our at Of course there should be some outdoor games, and a good one to play is "Daisy in the Dell." For this the children form in a circle, joining hands, and one is chosen to be daisy-picker. The daisy-picker runs around the outside of the circle, chanting: "Daisy in the Dell, Daisy in the Dell, I don't pick you, I don't pick you, I do pick you."
The child whom the daisy-picker touches upon reaching the last word must try to run [56] entirely around the circle and back to his place before the daisy-picker catches him.
If he succeeds, he need not be "it"; but if he is caught, he must be the daisy-picker. "Are You a Daisy?" is another jolly game. The players stand in a line facing one child, who is chosen to be "it." This child asks each one in turn the question, "Are you a daisy?" Each child answers by naming the flower he chooses to be. Thus one may say, "I am a rose"; another, "I am a pansy."
If any child chooses to say, "I am a daisy," he is immediately chased by the questioner, and if caught, he must take the place of the questioner. The game then proceeds as before. One rule is that a child must not repeat the name of a flower that another child has given.
A game that is based on the Mother Goose rhyme, "Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief," etc., is called "Rich Man, Poor Man."
One child is chosen to whisper to each of the players some word of the rhyme. The named children then stand in a circle, and another [57] child who is "it" may call for any character in the rhyme that he wishes; the child who has been given that name must respond by saying "Here," and then running away. For instance, the one who is "it" may call for "lawyer," and the child to whom that name has been whispered calls out "Here," and is immediately chased by the leader. If he is caught within a reasonable length of time, he is "it," and the former leader drops out. This should be played until only two are left.
The refreshments carry out the daisy idea, and should be served outdoors, either on the piazza or on the lawn. The centerpiece at the supper-table is a big bunch of daisies, and each child has a place-card on which is painted or drawn a daisy face, the petals forming a cap frill. The sandwiches are bread and butter, and some "good-to-eat" daisies can be made from hard-boiled eggs, by cutting the whites petal-shaped, and by mixing the yellow with salad mayonnaise to form the centers. Marguerites and little cakes frosted in yellow and white may be served with vanilla ice cream. [58]
A party built around one flower, for children, outdoors. The games need no equipment and the food is a pun. What has dated is not the ideas but the assumptions underneath them.
- The invitation is the first activityThe children draw and cut the daisies themselves and write one or two words of the invitation on each petal, so the message has to be reassembled by whoever receives it. The scrambled wording printed on the page is the invitation with its petals out of order.
- Daisy in the Dell is a chasing gameThe structure is the one most people know as Duck Duck Goose: a circle of joined hands, one child running round the outside, a touch on the last word of the chant, then a race for the empty place. Only the chant is tied to the daisy theme, so the game adapts to anything.
- Are You a Daisy? turns on the second ruleEach child in the line names a flower and only the one who says daisy gets chased. The mechanism that makes it work is the rule that no flower may be named twice: the safe answers run out, and somebody eventually has to volunteer to be caught.
- Piazza means the porchThe refreshments are served outdoors, on the piazza or the lawn. In American usage of this period a piazza was a roofed veranda along the house, not an open square. Read it as the porch and the staging makes sense.
- Daisy eggsHard-boiled whites cut into petal shapes with the yolk mashed with mayonnaise for the centre. That is a devilled egg taken apart and laid out flat, and it still works. The whites cut more cleanly if the eggs are cold and the knife is wet.
- Marguerites are daisiesThe marguerites served with the little cakes are there because marguerite is the French word for daisy. The name is doing the theme’s work on the table, in the same way as the centrepiece and the painted place cards.
What the page takes for granted is the interesting part: a lawn, a porch to eat on, heavy watercolour paper and crayons in the house, hand-painted place cards for children, and ice cream for a dozen guests. Somebody is expected to design the theme, make the food, paint the faces on the cards and run the games, and to do it lightly enough that the children believe they made the invitations themselves. The games are the older layer underneath, costing nothing and needing nothing but a yard and a rhyme. The daisy scheme laid over them is the newer idea, that a children’s party ought to have a subject.