ACTIVITIES
Get Mommy to get you some poster paints in several colors and lots of poster board. Trust me! She will be "helping" you do this.
One trick is to paint the hand with a brush and then press the hand onto paper.
Little kids do best when someone older (read bigger panda) holds their hand and presses it down for them. Once the paint is dry, add faces and other features to complete the drawing.
ANGEL: Paint the body; use handprints as wings.
BUTTERFLY or PEACOCK: Same as the dove- but use different colors on each finger.
DOVE: With white paint on blue paper, use one hand with fingers spread.
FACE WITH HAIR: The fingers represent hair.
FLOWERS: One handprint, made without the thumbprint, is a tulip. Or make a circle and use fingers to make a daisy or a sunflower.
GHOST: Use white paint on black paper, make a print, then turn the page upside down and add eyes.
HORSE: Make a handprint with brown paint. Turn the paper upside down and treat the thumb as the head, the fingers as legs. Draw eyes, a mane and a tail. Or use black and white and make a Zebra.
LION: Make the head with a circle of yellow paint, then make the mane using just fingers painted orange. Draw a face once the paint dries.
OCTOPUS: The ghost, but with green on blue or white paper.
SPIDER: Using just the fingers and black paint, make print with the heels of the hands together.
SUN: Same as sunflower.
TREE: Paint a trunk and branches. Make "leaves" with handprint.
TURKEY: With brown paint, use one hand with fingers spread for a side view. Use two handprints (made one at a time with thumbs together for a front view.)
RECIPES
Sugar Cookies from Grandma Sadie Panda
scant c butter
2 eggs – well beaten
1 t soda
salt
1 t extract vanilla
2 c sugar
1 c sour cream
2 t baking power
4 ½ c flour
Bake in hot oven 425°. Dot with sugar.
Grandma Panda wasn’t big on instructions so KingKing added these:
Preheat oven. Cream sugar and butter. Add eggs and softly beat. Next, in another bowl, measure out flour and on top of it put soda, baking powder, salt. Add to creamed mixture by alternating lfour mixture, then sour cream, flour mixture, vanilla and balance of flour mixture.
Roll out on floured surface to 1/8" thickness. Cut cookie with panda shaped cookie cutter (or use your own style).
Bake in hot oven until lightly brown on top. Ice with white and black in appropriate places. See Princess and the Panda if you don’t know where to put it.
STORIES
How the Panda Got Its Markings by Grandma MeMe
Told to KingKing by Grandma MeMe
Long ago, in a bamboo forest, four young shepherdesses came across a leopard hungrily eyeing a panda. The girls tried to stop the leopard from killing the panda. Though the panda escaped, the girls were killed. Soon news of the girls’ sacrifice got around to other pandas in the forest. They decided to hold a funeral in honor of the girls.
At the time pandas were pure white. Out of respect for the shepherdresses, the white pandas wore black armbands to the funeral. The ceremony was so moving that all the pandas began to cry. Tears flowed down their faces. They cried so much that their tears caused the dye on their black armbands to run onto their white fur.
As the pandas rubbed their eyes in anguish, they spread big black spots onto their faces. They clutched at their ears in sorrow and their ears turned black. In their angst, they began hugging each other. The black dye marked the areas under their arms and on their backs where the pandas touched each other.
Out of respect for the girls who sacrificed their lives for a panda, the pandas vowed never to wash the dye off their fur. They wanted their cubs and all fo the panda cubs yet to come to remember the girl’s deed. So all pandas, from then on, had black markings on their faces, ears, arms and shoulders.
The pandas wanted to make sure no one ever forgot the four young girls, so they created a monument to the shepherdesses that everyone could see for miles around. The pandas turned the bodies of the four girls into an immense mountain with four peaks. This mountain still stands in the Sichuan provice ner the Wolong Nature reserve in China.
(copyright 2000 by China Daily information. All rights reserved.)
(in honor of Pandamonium, coming in November 2004 to a con hotel near you)
Pandas have long been fascinating, though monochomatic, creatures. Their affinity for things black-and-white (crossword puzzles, Oreo cookies, piano keys) is legendary. History tells us that the first panda was created when a polar bear began playing with a bottle of ink, producing the distinctive panda markings. In defiance of Darwinism, this acquired characteristic has been inherited by pandas ever since.
However, few today are aware of a neglected chapter in the species= history: the comic book. In 1947, issue #12 of Weird Superheroes featured the first appearance of the nuclear-powered character Plutonium Panda. This issue sold out within 24 hours, and was followed by repeat appearances in the comic. Finally, the rotund but cuddly superhero was given his own comic, which also became a best-seller. For 187 issues, PP (as he was nicknamed) battled his arch-nemesis, Avaricious Aardvark.
In his origin story, we learned that Plutonium Panda had once been a test subject in a mad scientist= s laboratory, and received his superpowers following an explosion in the lab= s nuclear reactor. And strange superpowers they were: in addition to the customary flying, X-ray vision, ability to talk to the animals, and invulnerability, Plutonium Panda could glow in the dark (helpful for seeing one= s way in the dark, but detrimental in night battles), chew sticks of bamboo and spit the splinters at his foes, and administer crushing and sticky bear hugs to evildoers.
In Plutonium Panda #5, the superhero acquired a sidekick, Sagacious Skunk, and a headquarters, the Cavern of Contemplation. Sagacious Skunk was described as a scientific genius who took up crime-fighting after his family was killed by an exterminator hired by a multi-national air freshener manufacturer. After avenging their murder, he teamed up with Plutonium Panda. Sagacious Skunk provided wise counsel and ran lab experiments for Plutonium Panda for the run of the comic. In a three-issue story arc beginning in issue #106, Sagacious Skunk was held captive by the Aardvark= s henchman, Malevolent Muskrat. The skunk was not shown in the comic for these issues, while Plutonium Panda hunted for and rescued him. Rumor has it that the intrepid sidekick was actually sitting out a contract dispute with the comic book company, and would have been written out of the comic if the principals had not finally come to terms.
Plutonium Panda also fought a series of minor villains, including Quasimodo Quail, Lascivious Lemur (in issues which were banned from publication, and are rare collector= s items to this day), and Killer Koala, the latter in Plutonium Panda Giant-Size Super Annual #1. In this issue, Killer Koala, a criminal mastermind, disguised himself as Plutonium Panda to pull off a series of daring robberies. Plutonium Panda was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison for these offenses. Just when things looked darkest, Sagacious Skunk assisted the Panda to clear his name and bring the evil Koala to justice.
Though immensely popular for a time, the Plutonium Panda comic= s appeal waned when readers forsook its black-and-white format for comics featuring more colorful heroes. Plutonium Panda ceased publication with issue #149, leaving unresolved a cliffhanger that saw Plutonium Panda and Avaricious Aardvark, locked in battle, go over Niagara Falls in a single barrel. Faithful fans were left hanging with this uncompleted storyline, continuations of which have been the subject of many pieces of Plutonium Panda fan fiction.
In the early 1960's, Plutonium Panda and Sagacious Skunk were resurrected as characters in a live-action black-and-white children= s television show. The Plutonium Panda Playhouse ran for several seasons, but met the fate of the comic book as more homes got color televisions. However, reruns of the series are sometimes used as filler between late-night movies on independent TV stations to this day. Plutonium Panda made his last screen appearance to date in a public-service announcement promoting racial equality in 1967.
Plutonium Panda memorabilia has become extremely collectible in recent years. In addition to the high prices paid for back issues of the scarce comic, there has also been considerable demand for Plutonium Panda t-shirts, cereal bowls, and panda hats. A set of Plutonium Panda and Sagacious Skunk salt-and-pepper shakers recently sold at auction for well into four figures, and PP items are among the top sellers on ebay.
Despite its early demise, Plutonium Panda broke new ground for monochromatic characters in the comics, and is remembered fondly by its legion of fans to this day.