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MARSHALL - Perrin Boyd has been clowning around with the first-graders at Park Side Elementary, but it's OK, she's a professional.

Boyd, who was a clown with Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus for two years, has worked with the students for two weeks. On each Friday, the kids painted their faces, dressed up in rag-tag clothes, and performed the tricks Boyd taught them, like juggling scarves and balls, balancing feathers on hands, elbows and chins, walking a pole, and partner acrobatics.

"Getting to balance the peacock feathers" was the favorite part for Kaleb Engler and Micha Clark.

"We learned how to throw the balls and catch," said Clark. One important clown rule Boyd taught them, she added, is "we can't talk, our face is painted."

Engler learned "how to make yourself look like a bunk bed."

"I really liked the bunk bed and the tabletop," Clark said.

"Mostly juggling," said Olivia Jorgenson, "how to juggle two and three scarves."

"With clowning, the whole key is self-expression," said Boyd. "Just being comfortable in their body.

"The idea of a clown is to take your heart and turn it inside out and show your most vulnerable part to audiences," Boyd said. "If I trip and fall, everyone relates to it because everyone's done it. The clown exaggerates it."

She not only entertained them, but tried to educate the students.

"I give them a word a day," Boyd said. "So they have a circus vocabulary."

For instance, a clown is known as a "Joey," so named after Joseph Grimaldi from the 1860s, "the first clown who ever wore color," Boyd said.

Boyd believes in education. She graduated from Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Clown College in 1988, then got a masters of arts in teaching.

"My passion was always to be a teacher," Boyd said. "So I melded the two things I love."

Her visit was funded by a grant and supported by Compas, an arts organization in the Twin Cities. She is on the road from October until June traveling all over Minnesota. For the next two weeks, she will be in Montevideo.

The kids are not just getting to play with face paint and have fun.

When they juggle, they "have to use both sides of the brain," Boyd said. "Partner acrobatics is my weight holding up someone by leaning or pushing. I'm teaching about balance, balancing objects on hands and how to walk on a pole."

Walking on a pole is different from walking on the floor or even a gymnastics beam, Boyd said. "They balance on one foot and get balance over their base."

The kids got to choose one thing they learned and present it at the Friday finale to their classmates and parents.

"We love the circus we had in the gym," said Taylor Gilbertson.

"That's always a good thing for them to stand up and show what they've learned," Boyd said.