Face Fun

Can you raise one eyebrow? Make a three leaf clover with your tongue? Flip it upside down?

Such were the challenging questions my students winked, grimaced, and fish-lipped their way through. Yes, these are the lasting life lessons I desire to impart upon my young troupe. I handed out mirrors (from the dollar store) at the beginning of class, and we went through a long list of “can you’s” . . . quite entertaining!

I previewed my first list of questions with a bit of background on genes and alleles. Here is a list of dominant traits we covered:

Brown eyes
Dimples (one counts!)
Freckles
Cleft in the chin
Widow's peak
Unattached earlobes
Non-hairy ears (ok, we tried, but I have NO idea what this is talking about!)
Bushy eyebrows
Unconnected eyebrows
Naturally curly hair

There are many others which may be found here, but I stuck with those on the head in accordance with my theme, “Face Fun.”

Additional things to try:
eye crossing, single eyebrow raising, fish lips, winking, tongue rolling (make a “U”), tongue flipping (flip it upside down), ski tongue (touch nose with it), tongue folding (Only one in 1,000 people can roll or fold their tongue!), elbow licking

Also with the tongue you can make a two leaf, three leaf, four leaf, and my brother could even do a six leaf clover! Try touching your nose or chin with your tongue!

I had the children break off into pairs. The first one to make the other laugh with funny faces was the winner. They seemed to enjoy this!

Next, I shared a story about our experience at Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum in California. There were mirrors near the entrance where we could attempt various tricks with our tongues such as touching our nose, etc. Later, we noticed people making odd faces, fixing their hair, touching up their make-up and so forth . . . through windows. What were they doing?? Alas! We had been looking into one way mirrors way back at the beginning! Talk about humiliating! But I laughed SOOOO hard! Absolutely one of the best jokes I've ever seen. I could have spent hours just standing there watching people's reactions as they walked through the door and realized . . .

Then, I divided the class into two halves for two rounds of “Guess Who?” My assistant and I drew the cards and let the kids on each team take turns asking the questions. My team of mostly girls won both times, which did NOT make the boys happy. NOT AT ALL! Lol!

At the very end I handed out “Hairy Cowboy Wanted Posters.” Remember doing those as a kid? You use a magnetic wand to put hair (magnetic shavings) on a face. Bushy eyebrows, beard, whatever strikes your fancy. They loved ‘em!

Oh! Been wondering about the handsome man at top? That’s my TALENTED husband! I asked him to pose for a picture to include on a sheet passed around during class. He is the only person I’ve seen who can raise either eyebrow separately while stretching the lower lip down on one side and the upper lip up on the other. Now you understand another reason I married him (the last reason stated having been his spitting abilities)!