Things to Read

When Barb Moore, her brother Steve Bullock, and their three siblings were growing up in Latham, their house backed up to woods that provided all the playground they needed.

“We were outside all the time, all summer long,” Moore recalls. “We’d go out the door in the morning and not come home until lunch time. Then my mother would throw a peanut butter sandwich at us and we’d stay out until dinner. That’s the way my mother liked, and that’s the way we liked it.”

Moore and Bullock still remember building forts, trail riding on their bikes, and playing other games with the rest of kids in the neighborhood. In the winter, a swampy part of the woods would freeze and the family would ice skate. In the spring, when it flooded, they’d build rafts.

But around the time Moore reached high school, new houses started to replace the woods, and their parents sold off part of their property to a developer. Her brother and sister-in-law Colleen still live in the house she grew up in, but her two nieces don’t get to play the way she and her brothers did.

“There’s nowhere to build a fort or pick blackberries. There’s no stream,” Moore says.

In Saratoga Springs, where Moore and her husband Ken now live with their own two daughters, it’s rare to find kids playing outdoors. Moore says neighbors have told her that not until her girls moved in did the local children gather for games of hide and seek, kickball, ghost in the graveyard and flashlight tag.

Playing in woods and fields is even rarer, and the city doesn’t make it easy for kids. Bike riding is forbidden at the East Side Rec, and every winter the trees in High Rock Park sprout “No Sledding” signs. The carousel downtown was built over the objections of some who suggested young people didn’t belong in Congress Park at all.

And just as in Latham, vacant lots and wooded corners around town are giving way to new homes and manicured lawns. According to Alane Ball Chinian, executive director of SaratogaPLAN, even land-preservationists support “in-filling” the city’s undeveloped spaces, as a way to save outlying wild areas.

Things have changed for kids in rural areas, too, says Jana Harris of Pilot Knob on Lake George. Fear of strangers and neighbors who don’t know each other have made adults wary of letting children roam freely outdoors. Harris and her husband Lee grew up in Pilot Knob and live and farm there on 35 acres, but their children Charlotte, 9, and Grace, 5, get scolded if they go out-of-bounds.

“You don’t want to let the kids run out and play,” says Jana.. “There’s homes where there weren’t homes. My sister and I could ride our bikes on the road; there wasn’t excessive traffic. You could never do that now.”

“There used to be paths along the lake,” adds Lee. “We used to go up and down other people’s docks and fish -- you’d be arrested now.”

All around the country, says newspaper columnist Richard Louv, children are getting the message that it’s dangerous outside. Public school systems and the media, bolstered by laws and attitudes that consider unstructured play a nuisance and a hazard, are scaring parents and kids back inside just when fitness levels are dropping and hyperactivity is soaring. But the truth is, Louv argues in his new book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, that interacting with nature can be a salve for these problems and more.

“Obviously, I used ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’ as a phrase to get attention – and it works,” Louv admits in a phone interview from his home in San Diego. But he adds, “I believe a lot of kids are harmed. My kids [two sons, one 17, one grown] did not have the same free-range childhood I did. I do believe future generations will lose a sense of wonder.”

Research backs up Louv’s assertion that green spaces are “Nature’s Ritalin.” A 2003 Cornell study found that children living near nature showed less behavioral disorders, anxiety and depression, and Swedish investigators report that kids who played together outdoors have better social support systems. Children playing in natural environments instead of manmade playgrounds show interaction based on language skills, creativity and inventiveness rather than just physical prowess. Even just being in a room with a view, studies say, can boost a child’s attention span and help calm kids with attention deficit disorders.

But is it safe out there for kids? Louv says the stranger-danger statistics don’t match the fear we feel.

“A Duke University study said kids are safer than at any time since 1975,” he points out. “Still, that doesn’t comfort us completely. Dealing with that fear is in some ways realistic -- but there are other dangers, of keeping a child under house arrest.”

Anita Sanchez, senior environmental educator at the state-run Five Rivers Environmental Center in Delmar, encounters other fears as well.

“People are afraid of rabies and Lyme Disease,” she says. “We now carry hand sanitizers in the First Aid kits. We didn’t do that 10 years ago. Parents are really concerned about germs. But it’s just not possible to be totally sanitary in the outdoors.”

Sanchez does a lot of reassuring nowadays when parents and kids dissect an owl pellet, wade in a stream or explore a meadow.

“It’s going to be safe, it’s going to be fun,” she tells them. “Relax, we won’t get eaten.”

Jim Bruchac has seen students from Lake Avenue Elementary School in Saratoga -- which has virtually no green space – approach the shelter-building program at the Ndakinna Education Center in Greenfield Center with an air of feverish excitement.

“They’re extremely deprived,” Bruchac, the center’s director, says. “The first thing you see is that the woods are foreign to them. But there’s a transformation even in a couple of hours, an enthusiasm, an awareness of their surroundings. Their overall being seems to change.”

Not only does Bruchac share Native American and Adirondack culture, he also has to teach kids how to act in the woods.

“They’re not aware if you knock over a dead tree it might hit someone. If you run, you might trip,” he say. “We give the kids some basic survival skills, make them less afraid.”

For his part, Louv hopes the idea of “Nature Deficit Disorder” will encourage parents -- and society -- to let the kids out.

“There’s no replacement,” he says, “for having nature in your heart.”

Homework
By Kathy Ceceri

As long as there has been homework, kids have been complaining about it. And so have their parents. More than three years after Time magazine’s cover proclaimed, “The Homework Ate My Family,” parents like Jill Brewer of Porter Corners are still watching in dismay as math drills and spelling lists chip away at her family’s free time.

“There’s just so much work,” says Brewer, mother of second and fifth-graders at Greenfield Elementary School and a 13-year-old at Maple Avenue Middle School. “They don’t have time to play. They do it, have supper, and go to bed.”

And it’s not just the sheer volume of work children are asked to do -- as much as an hour and a half a night for Brewer’s kids – that bother parents, it’s assignments they don’t feel are helping their kids do better at school.

Many times “I don’t see the whole point of it,” Brewer says.

For many, the homework treadmill begins as early as kindergarten and just keeps going. Brewer still remembers a diorama – one of those three-dimensional scenes-in-a-box – which daughter Brianna had to do at home in second grade. The results were predictable.

“They’re not interested in doing it,” admits Brewer. “They do a little bit. Basically, it’s the parents that have to do it for them.”

While Brianna is now pretty independent when it comes to doing her own homework, her brothers Jamie, 10, and Aron, 8, still need a lot of help, whether it’s using the computer for research or just keeping on top of the load, which can be. And for Brewer, a nurse at a Saratoga Springs medical office who often doesn’t get home until 6:30 or 7 pm, that’s a lot for the school to ask of families.

“Why can’t they do it in class?” she wants to know. “These pages and pages are ridiculous.”

Brewer’s stress over homework is far from unique.

“Seventy percent of the families that come to see me for parenting issues have homework issues,” says Clifton Park psychologist Randy Cale. “Constant bickering and battles and struggles to get kids to do homework” tops the list, Cale says, followed by children who ask for too much help from parents or who turn out work their parents and teachers feel is “poor and inadequate.”

For parenting experts like Cale, dealing with homework is a matter of getting kids to do it with a minimum of fuss. The value of doing the homework, he believes, is beyond question -- unless you “didn’t want them to learn a lot.”

“As schools become more competitive, as we put more pressure on students, homework increases,” he says. “As a society, we can’t have it both ways.”

But in fact, the data backs up what parents like Brewer have come to believe: that homework, especially in the early grades, has no visible effect on how well children do in school.

“No research has ever found a benefit for elementary students,” says Alfie Kohn, author of “The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing.” As Kohn’s book points out, even studies by homework proponent Harris Cooper, who popularized the well-known “10 minutes per grade level” rule, found only a weak link between homework and academic performance, and then only in high school.

Cooper’s time limit “is very pleasingly moderate,” Kohn continues, “but research doesn’t support it – or that anyone needs homework on a regular basis.”

Other experts make claims for non-academic pay-offs, such as self-discipline, responsibility, and creating a bond between school and home. (Cale adds that homework is a valuable way to teach parents how to get their kids to fulfill their responsibilities.) To that, Kohn responds, there’s simply “not enough research.”

The fundamental question, Kohn believes, is who should decide what kids should be doing outside of school.

“How much time should kids have to spend on academic assignments?” he asks. “What other activities matter? Do we want them to grow artistically, emotionally?”

Yet despite the lack of evidence in its favor, many schools have policies making homework an automatic regimen. In Niskayuna, the Middle School Homework Guidelines advises parents to be sure that students aren’t spending “significantly more or less” than one to two hours a night, depending on grade.

Whatever its true merits or drawbacks, the bottom line may be that teachers believe in it and schools support it.

“There’s research and results based on standardized testing, and then there’s anecdotal evidence,” explains Felice Karlitz, education director of the Saratoga Independent School. “As educators, the anecdotal is more meaningful.”

“Homework is a reality,” agrees Hudson Falls Intermediate School Principal Robert Cook, whose school serves fourth and fifth graders. “There’s so much that schools need to accomplish in a short day, that it is inevitable.”

Kohn insists he isn’t for abolishing homework altogether. He’d just like to see the “default” reset, so that “no homework” is the norm instead of the exception, and that assignments be well-thought-out instead of automatic. That’s what Cook and Karlitz both say their schools strive for.

“We believe it should be meaningful,” Karlitz says. “We don’t believe it should be given every night, with the exception of math.”

“We leave it up to the professional judgment of the teacher, based on what’s going on in the classroom,” Cook says, adding “We always tell our parents and our kids that homework should not be burdensome.”

While Cook’s school has a system in place that lets parents communicate their homework concerns with teachers, Kohn says in many cases parents who complain are told that they are at fault, leading many families to suffer in silence. (Children’s complaints are so expected they’re given no weight at all, he adds.)

“I guess we’ve never addressed it because I didn’t think it would change anything,” Brewer says.

But Kohn urges parents to keep trying – even if that means setting their own limits and leaving some homework undone, a move Cale calls “dangerous.”

“The consequences down the road are severe,” Cale warns. “The message is, ‘Your educational instructors do not know what’s best for you.’ That message is not one that is going to serve them.”

Nevertheless, Kohn says “Parents should do what they feel is necessary to protect their children.”

LEARNING TOYS ON THE CHEAP
By Kathy Ceceri

You don’t need light-up alphabet blocks, talking globes or fancy science kits to spark a kids’ imagination. Inexpensive toys you put together from everyday objects can be all they need to help them learn and grow.

I know that some of my children’s favorite playthings have come from the hardware store or the grocery, not the toy shop. One mom I know, a former teacher, says she never found pre-made kits as impressive inside as their boxes made them out to be.

When it comes to learning toys for toddlers, many early childhood experts opt for hands-on play over fancy devices that teach numbers and colors. They believe younger kids get a better foundation for life by exploring how the world works, rather than prepping for academics.

And primary-school aged children may get a better grasp of math by applying it around the house using simple tools you design than from electronic quiz machines. As for older kids, they often appreciate the gift set that’s been created with their interests in mind – especially if it provides a chance for some interaction with you.

Preschool educator Bev Bos is one big proponent of “real” versus “plastic.” In her Roseville Community Preschool in California, kids paint the playforts, take apart appliances, build with PVC pipes, and mess around with water, ice, dirt and various gooey substances every day.

“If it hasn’t been in the hand and the body, it can’t be in the mind,” says Bos, a frequent lecturer around the country, including the Capital District.

Don’t demonstrate, advises Bos, just let your imagination run wild when it comes to doing things in a new and different way and your kids will follow your lead.

“You just need to think all the time,” she says. “Be as creative as you possibly, possibly can.”

Some Bos-inspired ideas for toddlers and preschoolers include:

• Water World – Put nesting measuring cups, spoons, and funnels and a pitcher or two from the dollar store in a plastic dishpan for kitchen-table play while Mom’s making dinner. An empty plastic soda with tiny holes poked around the sides (use a heated metal skewer to make them) creates a fountain that can be miraculously stopped and started when the cap is put on and taken off. Spray bottles, natural sponges (available in craft stores) and shell-shaped soaps can be thrown in for bathtime fun.

• Bubbling Over – You can put straws (fat and thin), pipe cleaner loops, turkey basters, and other waterproof items with holes in a dishpan, but a plastic tray or sheet (if you’re pretty mess-tolerant) lets kids get right into the action. You can even blow bubbles through your cupped hands (one of my kids’ favorite bathtime entertainments when they were small). For a generous supply of bubble juice, mix 1 cup Dawn dish detergent; 10 cups water; 1 tsp glycerin (or to “taste” – available in drug or natural foods stores) .

• Avant-garde Artist – Regular paint takes on a life of its own when it’s applied with bumpy rubber dog toys, brushes made from strips of newspaper or cut rubber bands, spools strung on a coat hanger, grout spreaders or brushes attached to knee pads or helmets. Ceramic tiles left over from a building project or bubble wrap from packages can make fantastic prints. Include a giant roll of paper (printers or paper mills will sometimes give bolt ends away.)

• Kitchen Help – Take some spatulas and mixing tools in mini sizes (try the sporting goods section for lightweight camping utensils). Add small rolling pins, cookie cutters, baking trays and oven mitts. Package along with play dough (store-bought or homemade -- see recipe below) and/or cake mixes (Jiffy brand just-add-water mixes are tiny and easy).

For slightly older kids, my friend Rena, an artist and handywoman with a background in early childhood education, took a cue from Montessori education when coming up with do-it-yourself play ideas for her son Brandon. One of Brandon’s favorite toys were bead chains, 10 medium-sized beads strung on a stiff wire. Ferioli made 20 of these, and he used them to measure distances all around the house. Chains of 2, 3, and 4 beads were used to demonstrate the concept of multiplication – three bead chains with two beads each equaled six beads. Ferioli also made her own geoboard, which has nails arranged in different geometric shapes and colored rubber bands to stretch on them to create interesting mathematical patterns.

For a color mixing kit young explorers could use on their own, Ferioli put together small containers of red, yellow and blue paint and food color, plastic see-through paddles to look through and combine, and several cups containing two different colors of playdough in various combinations. She also created cards with two different dabs of color and a plus sign to suggest possible mixes, and a simple book on color mixing (one possibility is “Mouse Paint” by Ellen Stoll Walsh).

Kids who like to build will enjoy a collection of Styrofoam balls, cones and other shapes in different sizes. Toothpicks or pipe cleaners can be used to connect them. For giant-sized construction, PVC pipes from the plumbing department of your local hardware store can be cut down to two-foot lengths and attached with connectors used to make towers, robots, and scary insects. Leave two or more ends open for a phone system that stretches across the yard or basement.

Or let your young inventor brainstorm with small motors, buzzers, lights and wire from an electronics store like Radio Shack. (Ask a salesperson if you need help making sure the voltage is compatible with the batteries.) The book “Electric Gadgets and Gizmos: Battery-Powered Buildable Gadgets That Go!” by Alan Bartholomew can give you ideas. Stow in a tool box for easy-to-store portability.

Finally, think about passing along an old family skill. In a wicker basket packed with fabric scraps, buttons, trim, needles and thread or brightly-colored yarn, include a card good for sewing or knitting lessons from you. Your kids will love knowing you put some thought into picking a gift that would stretch their minds.

Rena’s Playdough Recipe

2 cups flour
4 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 cup salt
1 1/2 to 2 cups boiling water
3 to 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil
Food coloring or unsweetened Kool-Aid

Put oil and coloring in water. Add dry ingredients and knead. Lasts a long time in an air-tight container.

LET 'EM READ JUNK!
By Kathy Ceceri

Captain Underpants! The name strikes terror in the hearts of teachers and school librarians everywhere.

As well it should. For Captain Underpants, also known by his true identity as mean old Mr. Krupp, principal of Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, is the comic book creation of George Beard and Harold Hutchins, fourth-grade goof-offs for whom no authority figure is above mocking, and no potty humor is too disgusting.

Little wonder then that Captain Underpants -- like George and Harold themselves, the foul offspring of the mind of children’s book author and illustrator Dav Pilkey – is the hero of millions of young readers, including my 9-year-old.

He has the boxed set of the first four Captain Underpants adventures, complete with its own whoopee cushion. He has “The Captain Underpants Extra-Crunchy Book o’ Fun,” and is saving up to buy its sequel. He even has a motorized rotating cardboard Super Diaper Baby (another character in the Pilkey pantheon), generously donated by a bookstore manager friend.

But Captain Underpants, with more than 14 million copies in print, is but the latest children’s book series to capture kids’ hearts and imaginations, much to the chagrin of education professionals.

Adults have hated series books ever since the genre started over 100 years ago with the forerunners of today’s Magic Tree House and Marykate and Ashley books, series like The Hardy Boys, The Bobbsey Twins, and Tom Swift, according to child-lit guru Jim Trelease.

In “The Read-Aloud Handbook,” Trelease relates, the chief librarian of the Boy Scouts of America warned adults in 1914 that "as some boys read such books, their imaginations are literally 'blown out,' and they go into life as terribly crippled as though by some material explosion they had lost a hand or foot."

But though today’s educators also fear the power of George and Harold to make students laugh at classroom authority, though some parents quake at his ability to turn their offspring into bathroom-noise-producing jokesters, there are those who welcome the arrival of the caped, bald defender of bored kids everywhere.

When a PTA mom in Mission Viejo, California cried out for help to thwart the principal’s plan to bar Captain Underpants from the spring book fair for fear he’d encourage “bad behavior by the students,” Trelease replied, "If you're a praying woman, get on your knees tonight and thank God for 'Captain Underpants.’”

As described in an essay on his website (www.trelease-on-reading.com), he told her, “'The research overwhelmingly shows that lifetime readers (which includes graduate students) cut their reading eye-teeth on 'series' books and comic books, not the classics. The more 'junk' they read, the better they got at reading and thus were able to graduate to more sophisticated books later.”

Yes, uttering their battle cry of “Amount Counts!,” many educators now believe that letting kids read things they enjoy is the key to producing lifelong readers, even things grownups consider “junk.”

Series books – both the quick and easy commercial kind, such as Nancy Drew, Goosebumps, and The Baby-Sitters Club, and the more sophisticated series, like Beverly Cleary's Ramona books, The Narnia Chronicles, and Harry Potter – can be addicting for kids. My son brings home Boxcar Children paperbacks from the library by the armful.

And according to Trelease, the large chunks of reading done by the series reader are the equivalent of what one researcher calls "private lessons."

“These daily readings teach the child the rules about skimming and inferencing, about where one must slow down to decipher the clues, about the importance of chapter titles, or character and setting,” Trelease writes. “The adage that ‘The more you read, the better you get at it,’ is not only true, but it should be the slogan of series books.”

Award-winning children’s book author Jennifer Armstrong agrees. Armstrong, whose writing includes well-constructed historical novels and non-fiction, spent the early years of her career ghostwriting books in the Sweet Valley High and Sweet Valley Kids series. But she isn’t shy about acknowledging these titles among her other works.

“I don’t think there’s any bad reading,” Armstrong, a Saratoga Springs resident, says. “It’s like training wheels. They help you learn to enjoy books.”
Armstrong cut her own teeth as a reader on what some might consider “frivolous” books. When the Scholastic book sale came around to her classroom, she spent her money on collections of Peanuts comic strips. As she got older, she took great pleasure in reading Nancy Drew. But she reports, “My choices as a child didn’t wreck me.”

All kids go through the series phase, confirms Saratoga Springs children’s librarian Laura Clark. “I read all that junk as a kid,” she admits. “They usually don’t stick with it.”
Clark points out that series books can be comforting to children, who can face a lot of stress at home and pressure at school. And a popular series like “Goosebumps” gives kids something to discuss and share with their friends, helping to spread the reading habit.

Trelease’s book notes the fact that all readers, young and old, like to know something about a story before they pick it up. That’s what made Oprah’s TV book club so popular, he believes. And with a series book, you know just what you’re getting.

Every book in a series features the same characters, the same style and the same pacing. Readers can get attached to their favorite characters. For Armstrong, Nancy Drew became someone she felt she knew and admired. “I thought she was fabulous,” she remembers.

And knowing there was always another book to read in the series meant Armstrong didn’t have to face the disappointment of not spending any more time with that character – “You look forward to going on another adventure.”

Armstrong also says, for what they are, series books are often well-written. “You always have to consider who is writing these books. I’m a pretty darn good writer, and I used a pretty sophisticated vocabulary.”

Armstrong believes books like Harry Potter, which are even more rich and compelling, are nonetheless popular because of the same qualities as a series like Goosebumps: “You pretty much know what you’re getting, but you get a new one each time.”

However, savvy adults, she said, can use these more involved books to open the doors for children to even more challenging and complex literature.

“One of the jobs of librarians is to extend that literacy experience for readers,” she said. “See a kid reading a magazine about dirt bikes, suggest a novel on the same subject. And now we’re getting him into the habit of reading stories.”

Getting kids to read “real books” may be the goal – my son also belongs to a kids’ classics book club that has introduced him to “Treasure Island” and “The Secret Garden” – but adults need to remember that required reading and dioramas assignments don’t foster a love of reading itself.

Trelease notes that many schools have started to emulate the adult book clubs that have sprung up around the country in the wake of the Oprah phenomena. But in their eagerness to tie their efforts to the curriculum, many get it very wrong.

“A big fear among educators is that someone will charge that valuable instructional time is being wasted on reading that is only enjoyable and not "testable,’" he writes. “Thus it is in Los Angeles they're insisting the 9th and 10th graders produce essays and art work associated with ‘Fahrenheit 451.’ Funny, but I don't recall any of the discussion groups (telling adults) to produce essays or posters on the books they were reading. Does anyone else see the contradictions here?”

Homeschooling parents have a particularly strong stake in encouraging literacy in their kids, since they’re responsible for making sure their children learn to read. On a recent warm fall afternoon at the rec fields on Geyser Road in Saratoga Springs, a group of homeschooling parents had only good things to say about series books.

“I used to love ‘Cherry Ames, Student Nurse,’” laughed one mom.

“I have this to say for them,” another mother, Barb Moore, chimed in. “My daughter is famous for starting books and never finishing them. Lately she’s started reading Nancy Drew books. She’s read four so far, and she can’t wait to get her hands on the next one.”

Debra Wetzel had the same experience with her son Graham, who’s hooked on Harry Potter.

“We have to wrestle him away from them to do anything else,” she said.

Raising readers, kids who love to read, has rewards that go far beyond mere enjoyment.

“Reading is such a wonderful thing,” said Andrea Hogan, whose 4-year-old Galen loves to hear the Arthur books over and over. “You’re never lonely. You’re never bored.”

“Literature in my view is one of the jewels of a civilized society,” Armstrong says. “It produces a more educated public. It produces thinkers. Literature allows us to be bigger than ourselves.”

PAPER MODELS ONLINE
By Kathy Ceceri

Before you even start reading, you might as well dash out for some card stock and a fresh color ink cartridge, because your printer is about to get a workout. Whether you and your kids are into space ships, fancy buildings, amazing moving contraptions or cute animals, make-your-own paper models you can print off the Web are like having the world’s largest toy factory right in your computer. Keep these links on hand for a boring winter afternoon, and in no time everyone from toddlers to grownups will be happily cutting and pasting away. They’re irresistible.

We started making paper models as hands-on projects in math, science and social studies, but now we make them just for fun. The first models we made, and good practice for novice model-makers, are geometric nets. (A net is what you’d get if you ran over a three-dimensional shape with a steamroller.) Paper Models of Polyhedra has more than eighty of them, along with explanations of why these beautiful figures have fascinated philosophers, mathematicians and artists for millennia. Cut the net out, fold and tape or glue the edges together, and you’ve got your original shape back – but you don’t have to settle for plain solids. Jill Britton’s Polyhedra Pastimes activities page has links to sites with dodecahedrons covered in tessellated (interlocking) designs and multi-colored magic fortunetellers (#4), folding and unfolding cubes (#27) and lots of other cool stuff.

Once you’ve got the basics down, you’re ready to move onto planes, trains, buses, rockets, robots, and castles – an entire universe of paper objects just waiting to be printed and put together, some of it intricately detailed. Fantasy game players and LOTR fans can find environments for their characters to live (and battle) in, while model railroad builders can fill in their landscapes with HO-scale stores and houses. Some good places to start are the sweet little bunnies, fairies, and holiday ornaments from The Toymaker; Free Paper Toys, which says its listings are “100% Kid Safe,” and the Paper Model WebRing, featuring sites from around the world. Don’t fret if the model you want is printed in Japanese, German or another foreign language. It’s not that hard to follow the directions solely from looking at the diagrams (Lego maniacs do it all the time). And it’s interesting to peek at pop culture from other countries. Just as the U.S. has bobblehead dolls of famous athletes, in Japan “hako,” or box-headed figures are all the rage. There are hako cartoon stars like Superman and Sailor Moon, as well as caricatures of known artists and world leaders.

NASA offers dozens of paper models of spacecraft, including the Cassini/Huygens spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. There’s a list of links to models at NASA’s Solar System website kids page. (NASA’s Spacelink website also has models tied to lessons on flight, but some of the files are 100 pages or more.)

Paper Toys, designed by a Texas man calling himself “Papermeister Dooney,” is a good site for models of buildings like the Sydney Opera House, Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, and Bill Gates’ mansion. He also has cars like the DeLorean, the Porsche 911 and the PT Cruiser. Paper Paradise, a commercial site, has a free airplane it says is capable of barrel rolls and loops that comes with directions for a rubberband launcher. For younger kids, the printer company Canon has Print Planet, with pinwheels, paper dolls and an entire paper town, with cars to drive in it, while rival Hewlett-Packard has undersea, outer space and dino dioramas.

Our best models so far include the free pop-up galleon from the commercial Heritage Model site; the Asian-influenced folding and unfolding cube toy by Ellen Yi-Luen Do; and Jill Britton’s Polyhedra Earth Map (we did the cubist globe). The kids enjoy creeping out their friends with a dragon that appears to watch you wherever you go, from Grand Illusions, and I’m very proud of my adorable moving woodpecker from Sasatoku. I haven’t yet decided what color paper I’ll use to print my 3D 2005 desk calendar, courtesy of Robert Simm’s Neat Math Page, but over in the kids’ room I hear plans afoot for a miniature movie set with the buildings, spaceships and robots. Guess I better lay in more supplies of heavy paper and ink...

Tips on techniques: The Card Modeling FAQ is the hobby’s bible. At minimum, you’ll need a B&W printer, heavyweight business-card-thickness printer paper, scissors and tape or a glue stick. For more advanced models you’ll want a good color printer, special readers like Adobe Acrobat, an X-Acto knife and a straight edge, a blunt pointy object like a knitting needle to “score” fold lines for sharp creases, and craft glue. Go easy on the Elmer’s; a dab’ll do ya, and hold the pieces together for a minute or two until set. And save the scraps -- they sometimes have important instructions on them. Then clear some shelf space, because your personal toy factory is ready to roll!

Check these out:

Paper Models of Polyhedra
Polyhedra Pastimes
The Toymaker
Free Paper Toys
Paper Model WebRing
NASA
Paper Toys
Paper Paradise
Heritage Models galleon
Sasatoku
Dragon Optical Illusion

WHY CRAFTS?
By Kathy Ceceri

Nothing is in the mind that is not first in the hand. – Aristotle

Crafts-based lessons blend art and technology. They show how culture, language, environment, technology and trade influence the way people live. And they’re fun!

Crafts connect us to people throughout history: 18th-century girls who were taught paper quilling in school, along with other refinements, to help them land a husband; Tibetan monks who learned how to create beautiful mandalas at an early age; Eskimo fathers carving ivory storyknives for their daughters to play with; and British craftsman designing metalwork pieces for village patrons.

Some of the questions you can explore while studying crafts include:

• Where did this craft originate? How has it changed over time?
• Does this craft serve a purpose beyond mere decoration?
• Who made this craft? Did they make it out of necessity, for profit, or for entertainment?
• Was this craft made for everyday use or special occasions? How can you tell?
• What materials did they use and why?
• How do the designs used reflect the culture that produced them?
• Do they have a sacred meaning or come from folklore?
• Are they meant to educate, scare or please viewers?

Copyright © 2008 Kathy Ceceri

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