No tears for the end of summer school!  Just two short weeks before I'm back in the muddle with kiddies.  In theory, I will muck out the condo in preparation for the return of the Woolly Mammoth and a visit from my sister.  In reality, I will work all week at the library, then stare out the window at hummingbirds and anoles.  The zucchini vine will gradually conquer the patio, wrapping its tendrils anound every living and nonliving thing.

Realizing how much I enjoy paper cutting, I've dug out my tiny, pointy Fiskars, and begun practicing again.  The effort takes such satisfying concentration, and clears my brain of a day's jangles.  It's a new direction for my year and a half old photo 365 Project.

These are my first three attempts combining photos with paper cuts.  The second cut has a disconcerting backward hand.  I'm playing with the paper cuts in the scanner and using Photoshop Elements to combine the images.  The paper cuts are real, hard copy scrap cardstock even if the collages are digital.

After sweaty evenings staring at a nonworking air conditioner, and the the wonderful working air conditioner, I'm into stripes and swirling.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Hot dill, summer in the city

Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty, but the aroma of the dill in the hundred degree heat is a '54 Chevy memory road trip.

The dill  has gone to seed after bringing us our fabulous black swallowtail experience.  Maybe if the children practice cutting with scissors and remove the umbel/umbrella seed heads, the dill will return to leaves and flowers.  I'm turning into a leaves/seeds/flower child flashing back to Mom's dilly bread.  I haven't made it in decades.

The aromatic bucket-o-dill seed rejuvenated Norton the elderly Class Rabbit.  He was hopping all over the classroom like a bunny half his age in search of a fix.

So while I was collecting dill seed to bring home, a small bug hopped out of the dill and onto the table.  It was just the size of a dill seed, and handsomely striped.  I had to take its photo through the plastic of a bug catcher, but it is still impressive in its striped outfit.

Mom's dilly bread recipe probably came from  this Pillsbury bake-off.  There's no kneading.  It's especially good with leftover Thanksgiving turkey.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Cake crumbs with Mr. Sunshine

Voila!  I whisked the lid off Dad's supper plate, and there was Mr. Sunshine.  I was so surprised I started laughing uncontrollably.  That started the aide known as The Lady In Red laughing, too.  She went out to the food cart to see if all the plates had carrot sunshines.  Nope.  Someone in the kitchen must think just Dad needs to brighten up.

Dad was not particularly amused, but he ate three carrots, and half each of the mystery meat, biscuit, and cake.  He drank some milk.  For him, a pretty good meal.  The Lady In Red started calling Mr. Howard "Mister Sunshine" instead.  He wore another quarter of the cake, but I tried to clean it up.

I told Dad a halfway right version of "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin".  It was because of the cake crumbs, of course.  Then I had to go home to change my shirt due to itchiness from my haircut, which felt as bad as burned currants in a waterproof.

Feeling less itchy, I found the last cassette player in the house and popped in the old Rabbit Ears tape of Jack Nicholson and Bobby McFerrin doing that Just So Story.  Fabulous as ever!

Them that takes cake

Which the Parsee-man bakes

Makes dreadful mistakes.



Last night we had a big storm with crazy lightning and hail.  Having fallen asleep on the couch under the twin skylights, it was a multisensory wake-up tapdance and lightshow.  My flowers weren't harmed.  A few miles south at my school the hail was so large it hadn't melted away eight hours later.  The lambs ears looked stabbed and slashed with pointy scissors, not the round-tip Fiskars.

I am listening to Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake on cd. In the nap room at school I'm reading The Caregiver's Path to Compassionate Decision Making, by Viki Kind, MA, with my Mighty Bright book light, connecting my three jobs--kids, books, and Dad.  At bedtime I read a bit of The White Lioness, by Henning Mankell.  I do not eat cake in bed. 

 You are my sunshine

My only sunshine

You make me happy

When skies are gray.

You'll never know, dear,
How much I love you.
Please don't take my sunshine away.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

I'm dreaming of a surfer Christmas

I'm glad the Obamas are spending a week or so in Hawaii. I hope the little girls are loving the island fashions. Maybe Michelle is checking out the Hawaiian quilting tradition.


When I was a child our very generous next door neighbor used to bring us Christmas gifts from Hawaii. We loved dressing up in shirts or muu-muus with bold floral patterns, leis and seed bracelets.

The guys behind the post office counter at 8:30 this morning looked like Maytag repairmen. This must be the slowest mail day of the year after a month of postal mania. When I told the man I couldn't stand any more Liberty Bells he was glad to show me some Hawaii statehood surfer stamps. I'm hearing that Hawaii Five-O theme song!

When the International Quilt Study Center opened in Lincoln, Nebraska, I saw my first Hawaiian quilt. It resembled a child's folded cut-out snowflake in red and white, but with island vegetation shapes. As a paper-cutter, I was intrigued. New England missionaries brought the idea of quilting to the Hawaiian natives in the early 1800s, along with new fabrics. There's something wonderful about the quilts that makes me feel a sweet aloha dream must be guaranteed for every user, Presidents included.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Fiskars for Friskies

[Feline ballet for stripes, spots, solids, and extra legs--by preschool artists]

Last week's fold/cut art lesson was the starting point for this week's kitty cat climbing tower composition. I told the students a fairly plausible story about watching mama cats and kittens playing on a carpet-covered climbing tower with scratching posts in a pet store window over the Christmas break.



It's true there was a pet shop on the upper level of the Collin Creek Mall when we moved to Plano in 1990. My sons liked to watch the puppies and kittens in the store window. We were usually en route to the Mervyn's kids department to buy Cheetah brand sweatpants and sweatshirts. Adding furry pets to our household of asthma sufferers was out of the question.



Fast forward eighteen years. This student drawing is surely the mama cat with returned college-age kittens home for the holiday break. She is tired, and not sure whether it is safe to shut her eyes and go off duty. Parental instincts are earth's most powerful forces. Here she can't quite relax when her grown kittens are out driving after midnight.

Nancy L. Ruder

Winter cut-outs

Cutting paper dolls, snowflakes, and valentine hearts were annual activities in the long cold winters of my childhood. Life was harsh for children before Fiskars scissors, but somehow we survived. Funny thing--these classic fold-and-cut diversions helped us develop

• Spatial awareness
• Fraction and math visualization
• Clock-reading skill
• Calendar and season understanding
• Storytelling and listening skills
• Sequential and cause/effect thinking
• Understanding of symmetry, density, repetition, proportion, positive-negative
• Self control necessary to refrain from cutting our own hair or the "fruit loop" on our classmate's shirt.

Sure, it's dandy that there are initiatives like One Laptop Per Child. I'm just not convinced a $200 computer will accomplish as much in villages without running water as a daily nutritious breakfast and a good pair of scissors per child.

Weekend Edition Saturday

December 13, 2008

In Peru, there are 10,000 one- and two-room schools — and thousands of children who live in homes without running water or electricity. But now, many of those same kids are the proud owners of their own little piece of modern technology: a laptop computer.
The laptops are part of a huge educational experiment. Peru is purchasing hundreds of thousands of low-cost computers developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and leading technology experts as part of the One Laptop Per Child project.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Single dips and double jugheads

It isn't easy learning to draw and cut Valentine hearts. I'm surprised I don't remember learning it as a kid. I have such vivid memories of learning to draw houses and people, to zip my jacket, to swallow pills, to stop a nosebleed, to avoid brussel sprouts, to climb a tree, and to spell y-o-u, l-o-o-k, and r-e-d.

My lead teacher makes Valentine hearts using the Department of Motor Vehicles method. Imagine finding your one true love in the line to renew your drivers license. Some enchanted afternoon in a crowded civic buildng smelling of dried roaches, repressed cigarette smokers, and mildewed corrugated cardboard you would have plenty of time to get acquainted, and possibly create little Yugos. It's the inspirational stuff of Rogers and Hammerstein!

m + v = heart

Somewhere in the last couple decades I began teaching kids the Baskin Robbins method of drawing and cutting out Valentine hearts. A heart is really just a cheap date for teenagers too young to barhop. They are sharing two dips of strawberry ice cream in sugar waffle cones. This is the best method for drawing along a fold of colored paper before cutting.

(cone + dip) x 2 = heart



My tulips are thine.

Puns are an essential part of any school Valentine celebration. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that zing!

Two ears are better than two lips for drawing hearts. An amphora is a two-handled Greek vase, generally with a swollen belly, narrow neck, and a large mouth. Sometimes the vase had a pointed bottom.


Jughead is a recurring character in the Archie comic books about Riverdale High School. Girls didn't seem as interested in comic books as boys when I was a pre-adolescent. I bought my Archie and Millie the Model comic books in the sunshiny front window of the Rex-All drugstore in Pierce, Nebraska. In those days of Twiggy and Yardley, I learned to draw Valentine hearts inspired by Jughead's ears.



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

J p O x

Looks like I fell asleep with my head on the keyboard, but it was actually a very successful drawing project for the preschool and elementary students. Driving home at six o'clock Monday, I was admiring the winter sunset of dusty lavendars, pinks, and smoky blues. Against that background the traffic lights were glowing red or green. At each stop the birds were coming to roost on the telephone wires. They were twittering in such a loud, large chorus as to overpower my car radio. It was so loud I couldn't even think.

Ah. Those moments when we can't even think are often the best for receiving inspirations. Arriving home, I checked my favorite blogs. Randel Plowman had posted this collage of band-aids and telephone wires:


I check Plowman's A Collage A Day blog for visual refueling several times a week.

No time to take photos of birds on the wires above the Walgreens parking lot across the way, and nothing right in my files, so I had to search online to prepare for my class. When I showed the students a photo, they clamored, "I've been there! I've been there!" Probably not, since it came from Britain. It's a copyrighted photo, so I won't put it in the blog, but if you follow the link and click through the slideshow you'll probably say, "I've been there," too. Birds crowd a crisscross of power lines in this bane of any urban business owners with lighted parking lots. The birds are loud and frequently messy, but they are NATURE to a child riding in a safety carseat and looking out the SUV window.

My goal is to help children become noticers and observers of their environment, as much as it is to draw or mix paints. It's nice to study meerkats and marsupials, but kids need a connection to the nature right here at home. If I can get them to notice starlings and grackles crowding onto a telephone wire, maybe they will catch sight of a cardinal on a bare branch some cold morning, or a mockingbird singing atop a chimney. If they look up they may feel privileged to see the aerobatic ballet of a scissortailed flycatcher or pause to note the red-tailed hawk surveying her world from the top of a power pole:



Much of the art project was a directed drawing, meaning that I drew samples to be copied. We were drawing birds on a wire, but using letters to begin our birds. Directed drawings help kids feel competent and confident to get started on a picture. I always build in opportunities for students' own creative additions.



J is for making jays and other birds with crests.

p is for birds who perch like the class parakeets.


O is for sleepy birds with their feathers all puffed up against the cold.


x is for a grumpy purple martin who doesn't want to be crowded.




[Is this one an opera libretto or a Looney Tune?]

We made our telephone wires by drawing a line across a sheet of colored letter-size paper, then cutting along the line. I still remember the awe I felt the first time I was shown how to slide the cut pieces apart to create a line against a black background paper. Right now I'm looking out my window at three power lines glowing flamingo pink in the late sunshine against a pale blue sky. To me the blue sky paper must have been cut and slid to let the pink paper show! You can imagine how I perceive jet contrails.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

A new big sister

My little student has a brand new baby sister. "What is your baby's name?," we ask. The student answers firmly, "Bah-ba-deer."

Baby Dear? That's what it sounds like. My own little sister had a lifelike, floppy baby doll named Baby Dear in the early Sixties. The doll looked like Eloise Wilkin's illustrations of babies in several Little Golden Books. The doll needed help supporting its head, just like a real baby. The doll also had hair just too tempting to a child who received a pair of left-handed scissors the same Christmas.



I read The New Baby to my sons hundreds of times. My Eloise Wilkin favorite from the Fifties was My Teddy Bear. I had a dress just like the girl on the cover.



Will the new baby really be named "Bah-ba-deer"?


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Ready to cut

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Fine motor/fine costumes

Playing paper dolls required fine motor skills, patience, perserverance, frustration tolerance, imagination and delayed gratification. It would be difficult to find such a twenty-nine cent education in any toys today.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

4 Ballet Dancing Dolls

Annette Funicello & Audrey Meadows.

Lt. Cmdr. Data? & Kerwin Mathews?

Found this folder of paper dolls on my last trip to Nebraska. Just pretend that the yellowed Scotch tape reinforcements are Ace bandages. As a kid, I thought the female dancers resembled Mouseketeer Annette and Jackie Gleason's wife on The Honeymooners. The male dancers seemed devoid of identity. Perhaps they were androids.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Thing One and Thing Two

The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold, wet day

I sat there with Sally.
We sat there, we two.
And I said, "How I wish
We had something to do!"

Too wet to go out
And too cold to play ball.
So we sat in the house.
We did nothing at all.

In this part of the country a cold, cold, wet day would be cause for dancing in the streets. In Seattle, though, it would be a bummer, man.

In all my years of teaching, I've never used The Cat In the Hat as the starting point for a lesson plan. This month is all about using scissors, and manipulating shapes. The results have been entertaining.

Twin sister created these images of the Cat and the Fish:

Night vision

I've been doing an art project this week using the book, Night Driving, by John Coy. The picture book is too long for most kids under age five, but younger ones like to find circles and half circles in the illustrations. The story is about a boy and his dad driving to the mountains at night in the Fifties. Elementary school kids are intrigued, and go on to imagine other things you might see driving at night.

Materials:
Black construction paper 9x12", or 9x6" for little kids.
Stickers--white circles, silver stars, hole reinforcers, eye stickers, alphabet stickers.
White crayons.
Glue sticks.
Scissors.
Kinko copies of black and white patterned circles.*

Teach kids how to cut circles out of copies. Show them it's like driving a car. The scissor hand cuts right on the line/"highway" of the circle edge. The other hand turns the paper like a steering wheel.
The littlest kids (3) also walked/"drove" around the room using Chinet plates for steering wheels. We pretended it was getting dark, so we turned on our headlights and saw lots of bugs flying around the lights.
I love this owl that looks like Groucho Marx!
Older kids relate to playing alphabet games in the car. "A is Abraham Lincoln, B is Babe Ruth...", or "B is bridge...Y is yawn...Z is zero on the speedometer".

The kids cut out lots of circles and snip some of them into half circles. The half circles can be VW Beetles/"slug bugs", which look similar to the old-timey car in the illustrations. Half circles can also become the moon, the tummy of a mule deer, the arches under the bridge, a baseball cap, the wings on a beetle or moth, or a dome-style tent. The eye stickers can be the eyes of the deer, or you can go off on a UFO tangent.

Use the crayons to draw more details. One girl used circles to create a boombox for the campers in the tent. Another kindergartner correctly made all the constellations she knew (I was very impressed!). Kids made Cinderella's carriage out driving at night, igloos, skunks, raccoons, deer on roller blades, hibernating bears in caves, and some very Seussian aqueducts with hiding trolls.

*You have to go to Kinkos because this project will use up all your toner! Make photocopies of patterned papers--zebra prints, crossword puzzles, buttons, bubble wrap, want ads, snakeskin, etc. Cut out circles of various sizes from the black & white patterns tracing CDs, jar lids, etc. Glue cut out circles onto contrasting patterns, and assemble an 8.5x11" page of black/white circles of various patterns.

Optional consumerism

As a very young Cornhusker football fan, just after the dinosaurs died out, I was impressed that the Kansas State fans had lavender toilet paper to toss down onto the football field at Memorial Stadium. Nowadays I am frustrated by the search required to find some plain white or recycled brown paper towels amid the tacky purple drawings of herbs and tea cups. It's just a paper towel for wiping up spills, not a personal aesthetic statement for heavens sake!

My young students often come to blows just to get the pairs of hot pink Fiskars scissors. "Scissors are a tool," I say. "It doesn't matter what color they are. It matters how you use them." I tell my high school senior son that it doesn't matter where he goes to college. It matters how he applies his abilities when he gets there.

We are overwhelmed with choices that are so often insignificant. In my spells of depression I've been unable to choose between cans of stewed tomatoes or Milton Bradley games for birthday party gifts. I've been sucked into panic attacks when I had to order from a menu. The first time I saw a "designer" switchplate cover I felt a jolt of future shock. We are so caught up in choices for meaningless items that we accomplish nothing. Go to a mall, and you will see the buzzards of meaningless choice soaring on the hot air up-drafts above the asphalt parking lot watching for dead meat.

I wasted time today searching out personal checks that reflect the real me. I have been reflecting the real me with Audubon bird checks for several boxes now, but they were a luxury I can't really justify. Just for one day it would be interesting to work the check-out lane at the grocery store to see what checks people buy----Sponge Bob with Bible verses. Most of the choices look like the cheapo kitchen towels at the Dollar Store. I ended up with some dragonfly checks that don't contribute any money to a nonprofit cause. I couldn't find any checks with perimenopausal women peering over their bifocals telling the baggers to carry the $108 of groceries out to the Buick. I'd like to mail my gas bill off with a check proclaiming "Hot flashes save energy", but I can't even find checks that Shave the Whale.

What I really wish is that all checks would remind us that we vote our conscience with every dollar we spend. Choose wisely.

Paint on that comfort food!

Stapling is hard work. My little students are making fierce lion headdresses. They are learning to hold their scissors the right way so the dangerous alligator can do its biting. They are transforming squares into octagons. They are folding and curling papers.

I've been stapling the components of lion headdresses all week. No classes today, but my hand is still sore from stapling. For a treat I went to the closest fabulous fingernail place. The hand massage by the manicurist helped my staple strain.

Didn't realize until I got back home that I chose a polish that looks exactly like Campbell's Tomato Soup! Guess I've been a bit stressed lately.

The Paint Fairy and Fluffy

Back on 5/19/04 I wrote about how to play "Pass the Paint" in your art class. I don't think I explained about Fluffy the Paintbrush, but I will do that someday soon. "Pass the Paint" is like Musical Chairs. It is a chance to review how to hold and treat Fluffy the Paintbrush, to recap the shapes we've been learning, and cut loose with bright tempera paints. "Pass the Paint" is also a chance for me to dance around as the silly Paint Fairy, and to play lots of good music. I play lots of Mozart and other classical favorites, Linda Ronstadt, and Buddy Holly:

Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, Peggy Sue,
Oh, my Peggy, my Peggy Sue
Oh, well, I love you gal, and I need you, Peggy Sue.

The preschoolers especially like "Peggy Sue", but they think the song is "Baby Sue".

Baby, baby, baby, baby, Baby Sue! They start singing their version and playing air guitar. I twirl about in my imaginary pink poodle skirt and saddle shoes, while I wonder about my sister's doll with the bad haircut. The doll was named "Baby Dear", and my sister mastered her left-handed scissors by giving "Baby Dear" a really bad haircut. My students sometimes give themselves equally bad haircuts when they learn to use scissors. It doesn't happen often, and we usually take it in stride, unless the student is scheduled to be a flower girl or ring bearer (aka "Pillow Boy") in the near future.

Texas Trendsetter

Ten days ago I reported on one of my preschool students who had gone over to the Dark Side with a pair of Fiskars scissors. She had given herself a John Deere contour farming haircut, which at least is cool in the Dallas mugginess-plus climate.

For performance day she arrived dressed in her pine green velveteen Chrismas dress with the white lace color. Her legs were covered with well-scratched mosquito bites. Each bite was circled with Bic pen, then the circles were connected dot-to-dot style. Her mom must be pleased she didn't choose a Sharpie. I am pleased that she didn't create her personal style in my classroom.

When the new version of The Sims comes out, I think this should be an appearance choice for the Sim children. I also hope the little Sims can stand around stomping their heels so their shoes light up. I pray there will be a special sound effect when they put on their Velcro shoes and adjust the straps fifteen times. If you need me, I'll be in the lab working on the prototype for The Sims Preschool.

Going over to the Dark Side

My calling is to train young Jedi warriors to use Fiskars scissors. Using scissors is a powerful force for change. Mastering the skill involves not just coordination, but focus and imagination. The young Jedi must become one with their inner crocodile.

Sadly, there comes a time when most Jedi must flirt with the Dark Side. They have mastered the power to use Fiskars. Now they must prove they have the mature judgment to use that power.

Often, a young warrior or warriorette will exercise the power without the judgment. These are the sad days when I must send ponytails and bangs home to mommy in a ziplock bag. Then I want to zoom off in my landspeeder to the cantina.

My current group of Jedi-wannabes includes a four year old warriorette who has used the force for evil. She has snipped sections of her hair down to the scalp in rows. Try to visualize the wookie after a John Deere convention.



Make a Crocodile Your Cutting Buddy

Mastering scissors is an exciting moment in every preschooler's life. It takes a small investment of an adult's time and attention to reach that mastery safely, but it doesn't have to be torture for either child or adult. The two best friends of the child learning to cut are a pair of Fiskars round-tip scissors, and an imaginary crocodile.

Why Fiskars? I find the extra expense over other round-tip scissors to be worth every penny in reduced frustration. Also, lefties usually experience success with Fiskars as well as right-handed children. This is important when hand preference has not yet been determined.

Why the crocodile? Ah, that's a good question. Preschoolers sense that mastering scissors will make them more powerful little people. A crocodile is a powerful animal that can bite the way the child wants the scissors to bite the paper. Grown-ups forget the thrill of personal power that comes with being able to cut snowflakes, paper lanterns, valentines, and "play money". The crocodile imagery helps the child remember the correct way to hold and manipulate scissors.

Help your youngster place his thumb in the small round hole of the scissors, and then two or three fingers in the larger hole. Say that the thumb is the crocodile's eyes. The crocodile can only bite if it stays awake, so the thumb needs to stay on top when the child is cutting. Children usually try to roll their hand inward, and their thumb down when beginning to cut. Tell the child that rolling the thumb under makes the crocodile fall asleep and then it can't bite anything.

Before trying to cut, have the child make the biting motion of opening and closing the scissors. If your child doesn't have the hand strength to open and close the scissors, delay learning to cut, and instead spend some fun time together squeezing and shaping with Play-doh or clay to increase strength. When the child is ready to make the crocodile bite, you can help hold the paper and say, "Bite, bite, bite" along with the child.

Crocodiles are very hungry, so stock up on construction paper. It is easier to cut than copier paper or newspaper (or sibling's hair). Soon your young crocodile will be ready to expand its diet.

We often jokingly compare risky behavior to "running with scissors". What's the best way to carry scissors? Have your child put their fist around the crocodile's closed mouth, with the scissor blades pointing down, as if you were going to peek through the handles or use them for a microphone.

Share these wonderful books with your young snipper: Imagine You Are a Crocodile, by Karen Wallace; Bernard Waber's Lyle the Crocodile stories; and The Elephant's Child by Rudyard Kipling.

Fx

I am stunned. My preschool students are still mimicking my scissor voices after three weeks. [See 11/25] What do you suppose the percentages are for auditory, visual, and kinetic (?) memories retained at the age of three? What percentage of them still actively flavor our actions 45 years later?