Please visit my new endeavors, Honeysuckle Sphinx Moth Design, To Know a Place: Oak Point Nature Preserve, and CollageMama's Hearty Breakfast Blog. Thanks for stopping by!
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
CollageMama's Itty Bitty Blog
Teaching art with itty bitty students, exploring creativity, finding new passions and purpose, and enjoying the progress of my three greatest works of art out there in the big world.
6/17/13
2/26/13
Detouring.
Pardon our dust. This Itty Bitty Blog is heading to sunny side up climes. Every decade or so it's time to hit the trail. Thank you for your faithful or misguided arrival at this blog. I would be delighted if you stopped in at my new blog, CollageMama's Hearty Breakfast Blog. The first post is here
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder aka CollageMama
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder aka CollageMama
2/21/13
Mental health with feathers
Woodpecker |
Mockingbird, juvenile. |
Greeted by a woodpecker. Under the watch of a kestrel. A red tail hawk circled overhead. A mockingbird posed. Mallards bickered and bullied in Spring Creek under the highway.
Bad boy mallards |
Kestrel photo good enough for an ID. |
Odd, loud, buzzy, rattled bird calls tantalized me as I got closer to the US 75/190 George Bush tollway interchange.
Kingfishers avoid paparazzi |
The buzzy calls led to a pair of kingfishers on a telephone wire above the creek, but under the highways. No mistaking the shape of the kingfishers, or the glorious blue when they swooped along the creek declining to be photographed by the paparazzi.
Teeny brown birds in a budding tree consented to photos but declined to be identified. On the way back I spotted a heron looking scruffy near a heap of trashed grocery carts.
Something was bothering me earlier. I wonder what it was... besides the ugly grocery carts.
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
2/17/13
Rose-scented handkerchief
After more googling, I found the rose image to the left that made the art project click into place. The children were very excited about their rose art. It made a nice gift for their families on Valentine's Day.
We dyed coffee filters in liquid watercolors. These are not, I repeat, not made from pastel scented Kleenex. Oh, that favorite kiddie craft of the Sixties! My mom used to get so ticked off when we used expensive Kleenex for something other than sneezes. Yes, people actually carried cloth handkerchiefs when I was a kid. Washed them. Ironed them! That's how little girls learned to iron. Little boys did not learn to iron in the Sixties! At birthday parties we played Drop-the-Handkerchief, and Ring-Around-the-Rosy.
We've come a long way, baby, except we make twice as much waste per person as we did in 1960. The average American makes 7.1 pounds of trash a day. Some of my preschoolers make that much just in tissues, toilet paper, Pull-Ups, and juice boxes. Alas. Thanks to Edward Humes' Garbology for the statistics.
And thanks to Marie Hall Ets for one of my favorite read-aloud picture books of all time, In the Forest. I wish it would be republished, perhaps as a board book. Rose still rhymes with nose, the original reason for the art class theme.
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
2/15/13
We interrupt our program of dance music
No, this is not coming to you from the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel in New York City. It's just an itty bitty pulp week here in north Texas. First, I was introduced to the entertaining Pulp-O-Mizer cover maker website. Find your own inner mad scientist or grab your ray gun!*
Home from school for lunch we sit on the tile floor of the basement at the house next door drinking Chocolate Quik, eating hot dogs or tuna fish sandwiches, and watching Twilight Zone reruns. Giant ants. Black and white tv. Alien abductions. Worse, the dark laundry room and wood shop workbench behind the curtained doorway. You get scared, kid, you gotta go upstairs to the bathroom and risk meeting the irritable mother of the house.
Jump into the time machine, boys and girls, and travel with me to THE PRESENT DAY. Enter the circular parking lot at a favorite park in your cream puff low-mileage used car. Only later will we realize how obvious a landing site this is for armies of revenge-seeking giant Frosted Mini-Wheats from outer space.
We interrupt this cereal take-over report with a special bulletin:
METEOR HITS EARTH
BUT ASTEROID MISSES
NASA says the meteor hit is unrelated to the asteroid miss. Yes, the last two are real, but don't let your cereal get soggy. Don't say you weren't warned.
* Being of a certain age, Reagan always made me think of ray guns.
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
Amazing Wonder Stories is a book we kids read at the breakfast table all about worms of THE FUTURE. Nothing like a bowl of two shredded wheat biscuits with two heaping teaspoons of white sugar floating in the bluish skim milk to start the day right. KFOR Radio droned the local news and farm report in the background as the "shattered wheat" slowly changed from inedible haystack to incredible Blob.
Home from school for lunch we sit on the tile floor of the basement at the house next door drinking Chocolate Quik, eating hot dogs or tuna fish sandwiches, and watching Twilight Zone reruns. Giant ants. Black and white tv. Alien abductions. Worse, the dark laundry room and wood shop workbench behind the curtained doorway. You get scared, kid, you gotta go upstairs to the bathroom and risk meeting the irritable mother of the house.
Jump into the time machine, boys and girls, and travel with me to THE PRESENT DAY. Enter the circular parking lot at a favorite park in your cream puff low-mileage used car. Only later will we realize how obvious a landing site this is for armies of revenge-seeking giant Frosted Mini-Wheats from outer space.
Yes, the disciplined invaders began their march from the circle's center. It is important to note that this estimate is preliminary, and may be revised as more data is obtained.
METEOR HITS EARTH
BUT ASTEROID MISSES
NASA says the meteor hit is unrelated to the asteroid miss. Yes, the last two are real, but don't let your cereal get soggy. Don't say you weren't warned.
* Being of a certain age, Reagan always made me think of ray guns.
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
Labels:
breakfast,
crystal radio,
Fifties,
NASA,
photos,
Presidents,
sci fi sons,
Sixties toys,
transistor radio
2/10/13
You must change your purse.
Rilke did not say that. Mom said, "Don't spend all your money on a purse, as you will have nothing to carry in it." Mom also bought me a "good leather purse" when I got married, predicting accurately that it would be a very long time before I could afford to buy another.
I did not spend all my money on this life-changing purse, but I can fit pretty much all my retirement savings inside it. And archaic Apollo would go for the cross-body strap.
It is indeed time to change my life. I need to hit the road and travel lighter. I need to get out of Dodge and go west. Wish I could take nothing but photos and leave nothing but footprints, but a condo is not so easy to shed, especially full of so much.... So envious of the caterpillar that makes a chrysalis and emerges to fly away.
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
I did not spend all my money on this life-changing purse, but I can fit pretty much all my retirement savings inside it. And archaic Apollo would go for the cross-body strap.
It is indeed time to change my life. I need to hit the road and travel lighter. I need to get out of Dodge and go west. Wish I could take nothing but photos and leave nothing but footprints, but a condo is not so easy to shed, especially full of so much.... So envious of the caterpillar that makes a chrysalis and emerges to fly away.
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
Labels:
AARP-age,
caterpillars,
change,
condo living,
from the Greek,
poetry,
purse,
wisdom
2/9/13
Survivor--100 Days of School
Happy, happy one hundredth day of school! We made it! May I not see ten groups of ten Cocoa Puffs for another year. I am so very counted out. When I ground the coffee beans this morning I forgot to stop at my usual 28, and was still grinding at sixty! Oops.
This week the students brought in "collections" of one hundred items to practice counting and grouping.
Packing peanuts wiggle when lined up. |
We have counted:
- Legos
- Hot Wheels
- Pennies
- Popcorn kernels
- Beads
- Jigsaw puzzle pieces
- Drinking straws
- Crayons
- Jelly beans
- Popcorn
- Angry Bird cookies
- Animal crackers
- Cocoa Puffs
- Cheetos, for crying out loud
- Mixed crackers
- Feathers
- Pompoms
Marthe Jocelyn's book, Hannah's Collections, helps kids consider the idea of saving items. Other books focus on the counting and the excitement of bringing a group of objects to preschool. Hannah in the book is not a hoarder, although I question the accumulation of sticky popsicle sticks. Wish I could remember what book featured a boy saving chicken drumsticks in his sock drawer!
I'm not a hoarder, I'm just disorganized and hesitant to throw things away! Maybe I've spent my whole life accumulating items to take to school on the hundredth day. My dad wasn't a large scale tv-worthy hoarder. He was more of a mini fast food condiment collector. My frail 89-year-old neighbor isn't so much a hoarder as too unsteady to go to the dumpster and too proud to ask for help.
I'm not a hoarder, I'm just disorganized and hesitant to throw things away! Maybe I've spent my whole life accumulating items to take to school on the hundredth day. My dad wasn't a large scale tv-worthy hoarder. He was more of a mini fast food condiment collector. My frail 89-year-old neighbor isn't so much a hoarder as too unsteady to go to the dumpster and too proud to ask for help.
Parents don't seem to send their kids out in the yard or park to collect acorns, juniper berries, clover flowers, or maple seed helicopters. In my childhood I could have taken a hundred foil potpie pans to school.
The hundredth day of school for grown-ups:
Four rows of ten hangers plus six rows of ten pickles equal one hundred.
Four rows of ten red wiggler worms do not cooperate.
Ten rows of ten wine corks can't go to school!
Labels:
cleaning,
collecting,
counting,
hoarding,
old age,
parenting,
picture books,
sorting,
teaching preschool
2/7/13
A heart-shaped Slinky, a jug of wine and thou
My mission:
To create a tiny poem based on the structure in Cynthia Rylant's book, If You'll Be My Valentine. The poem will be attached to heart-shaped Slinky toys for students. And then, of course, the tape will self-destruct.
Time is ticking down, and the theme from Mission Impossible is messing with my heart beats. It's syncopated with the original Slinky song from 1960s television commercials
If you'll be my valentine
I'll dum de dum de dum
I'll dum de dum
and dum de dum
and dum de doodle dum.
My mission is doomed!
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread,--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
To create a tiny poem based on the structure in Cynthia Rylant's book, If You'll Be My Valentine. The poem will be attached to heart-shaped Slinky toys for students. And then, of course, the tape will self-destruct.
Time is ticking down, and the theme from Mission Impossible is messing with my heart beats. It's syncopated with the original Slinky song from 1960s television commercials
If you'll be my valentine
I'll dum de dum de dum
I'll dum de dum
and dum de dum
and dum de doodle dum.
My mission is doomed!
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread,--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
2/6/13
Obituary for the iron
Fans of the Monopoly iron wept in their beers tonight after Hasbro announced that game piece was voted off the board. There were no reports of protests or rioting, but my choreographer sister expressed fans' indignation in a text message:
This is an outrage. The iron slid across the board with grace.
So well said. It's unlikely my epitaph will be so uplifting. It will probably be more like:
She languished half-charred in the greasy hell at the bottom of the stove burner drip pan.
My little students are unlikely to be able to identify an iron, steam or flat. They don't even know the word "stove".
The Monopoly iron slid along the board, as did the cannon. The other pieces had to be tapped along to count out one's roll of the dice. I flopped down on the floor and peered under the bed, but my Sixties era Monopoly game was not there. Seems like after Norton the rabbit hopped under the bed to nibble the box and eat the $500 bills I moved the game somewhere "safer". But where? Probably under the stairs and beneath the boxed up fake Christmas tree. I blog for truth, freedom, and vintage game board pieces, but I'm not moving the sofa to haul out the Christmas tree to find Monopoly.
Clue was under the bed instead. Will we be voting to change the deadly weapons next? Or will we send Colonel Mustard into exile?
On a different tack, my tie dye experiment results were underwhelming.
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
Labels:
appliances,
board games,
ironing,
Nebraska in the 60s,
obits,
teaching preschool,
tie-dye
Stockholm Octavo
Picked up roses for today's art class at Albertson's. This one is an intriguing smoky salmon red. The children won't like it, but I couldn't resist. Three to nine year olds prefer the glaring colors I call Walmart Purple and Target Pink, preferably with sequins and leopard prints.
I've read several books since I finished Karen Engelmann's Stockholm Octavo, but that is the one staying in my mind. The patterns of the octavo, a type of fortune telling with cards, are much like patterns in quilt blocks and even tie dye. Tie dye being my other project of the moment.
This is the first time I've tried pulling basting threads on a dye project.
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
Labels:
Pink Aisle,
preschoolers,
RED,
teaching art,
tie-dye
2/4/13
Red roses for a blue lady
Theme roses
rhyming noses
Valentine-zy without being Valentine's
Valentine-ish without smooching or Saint
Please no movie product tie-in Happy Meal toys
A rose by any other name
would smell as sweet
Peppermint tea remember
when white paste was to eat
A dozen for counting
a horse for Robert
the Rose Horse
but No Roses for Harry
that dirty dog
My luxurious gift
what girl can resist
a $313 Buick window regulator
sure beats a push-up bra
from Montgomery Ward
Pull out the old wallpaper sample books
All those princesses pricking their fingers on thorns
Outlook less Gypsy than Grimm
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
2/3/13
So far behind I cain't get caught up
Shuffle/ Don't even know where to start, so I'll just swagger into this saloon and sit myself in the corner with my back up to the wall. You know how to deal? Cut the deck.
I do not have enough patience stored up in my lifetime account to teach any more children to play card games unless those kids are brilliant, well-mannered, good sports, and therefore direct descendants. Deal clockwise.
Wild Bill, my ancient next door neighbor, is in the hospital. I don't know if he will ever return to his condo. Wild Bill is like a shadow of my dad, Howie. If this is Bill's exit event, I pray he can leave with most of his wits and much of his dignity. Go fish.
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
Labels:
condo community,
Sixties toys,
teaching preschool
1/27/13
Bringing the car around
1954 Chevy Bel-Air |
Howie and Fritz bought their '54 Chevy from the dealer in Pierce, Nebraska after they took driving lessons. It was their first car, and the only vehicle they ever bought new. It was a "pea green" two door Chevy.
After brunch I had missions and errands, an expiring Arboretum membership and expiring shoe store bonus points to tackle. Clicked on WRR, 101.1, Dallas' wonderful classical music station to find an all Mozart playlist for Wolfie's birthday. Suddenly one recording plunged me back a year. There I was sitting at Howie's bedside along with the hospice nurse. Each of us making our own sorts of notations as we watched Dad slowly fail accompanied by Mozart's birthday playlist on WRR.
In one of our dementia rabbit hole conversations, Dad demanded I open his room window then bring the Caddie around. When I pulled up in the Caddie, Dad planned to climb out the window. Together we would light out for parts unknown.
light out
vb
(intr, adverb) Informal to depart quickly, as if being chased
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003
Dad did not depart quickly. The hospice nurse and I waited, breathed, prayed, drifted, until it was no longer Mozart's birthday. I wrapped the cord around the small radio and placed it in a bag.
© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder
Labels:
'54 Chevy,
car radio,
Dallas Arboretum,
death,
generations,
idioms,
memory,
Mozart,
vintage cars,
WRR
Childhoods of Mediocre Americans
A girl and her needle-nose pliers : a biography for young readers / by CollageMama.
This week I unjammed my document shredder with those needle-nose pliers. Pretty pleased with myself. True, if I didn't feed peculiar materials for worm compost bedding and/or mixed media collages into the machine it would work better. Then the diamond-cut shredder at work jammed, and I applied my new expertise and a liberal dose of shredder lubricant to the task.
I don't have a team of rivals or the art of power. Young kids have many over-achieving role models, with or without steroids. The first time a child gets a happy face sticker for folding his/her nap blanket, we are pondering future greatness. Never mind that blanket folding has not been accompanied by a reduced amount of digital nasal exploration, or a remembrance of things to be flushed, but I digress.
In Mrs. Ahlschwede's third grade class we read the Bobbs Merrill "Childhoods of Famous Americans" formulaic biographies. Then we recorded the titles on lined 3x5 notecards in our very best new cursive handwriting. Abigail Adams and Jane Addams were dull, depressing books, but I kept working my way through the alphabet picking up reading speed and comprehension. When I was plucking books off the shelf it seemed that every female was either rolling hoops down cobble streets or wearing hoop skirts. I couldn't even hula hoop.
This week I unjammed my document shredder with those needle-nose pliers. Pretty pleased with myself. True, if I didn't feed peculiar materials for worm compost bedding and/or mixed media collages into the machine it would work better. Then the diamond-cut shredder at work jammed, and I applied my new expertise and a liberal dose of shredder lubricant to the task.
I don't have a team of rivals or the art of power. Young kids have many over-achieving role models, with or without steroids. The first time a child gets a happy face sticker for folding his/her nap blanket, we are pondering future greatness. Never mind that blanket folding has not been accompanied by a reduced amount of digital nasal exploration, or a remembrance of things to be flushed, but I digress.
In Mrs. Ahlschwede's third grade class we read the Bobbs Merrill "Childhoods of Famous Americans" formulaic biographies. Then we recorded the titles on lined 3x5 notecards in our very best new cursive handwriting. Abigail Adams and Jane Addams were dull, depressing books, but I kept working my way through the alphabet picking up reading speed and comprehension. When I was plucking books off the shelf it seemed that every female was either rolling hoops down cobble streets or wearing hoop skirts. I couldn't even hula hoop.
Fast forward to Bernie Madoff : Young Ponzi Schemer. I'm evaluating subtitles for my new series of deadly dull early reader chapter biographies.
- : Crockpot Girl of Old Nebraska
- : Finder of Lost Fisher Price Chickens
- : Hot Glue Sharpshooter
- : Sight of Blood Fainter
- : Young Letter Writer
- : Future Blogger
- : Chex Mix Maven
I've never tried to insert an Excel document into a blog before. These are the 180 titles I've compiled so far for the Bobbs Merrill series, Childhoods of Famous Americans. Perhaps it will save some other obsessed person a long search. Or it will suggest a new subtitle.
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