Lady’s Puppets Unlock Children’s Imagination

On occasions, Grace Kreps chats “with my kids” as she calls Simba, Whitey, Coco, Hugo, Daisy, Fred and Harry, the marionettes that helped her teach Spanish to junior high school students in Fullerton.

“Sure, I still talk to the puppets,” said Kreps, 68, of Brea, who retired eight years ago and now takes her dozen or so “kids” to entertain senior citizens at convalescent homes and handicapped kids in hospitals and schools. “When the puppets get through with a performance I tell them, ‘You did a good job out there.’ ” Of course, everyone calls her Puppet Lady. “I don’t mind the title,” she said. “I love puppets.” It’s also her citizens band radio moniker.

When she retired, “I couldn’t throw the puppets away,” said Kreps, who manipulated them for 17 years as part of her teaching tools. “When I used the puppets in class, the children would let their imagination go, and there’s no limit to what you can do when that happens.”

She said students would often take the role of puppets and act out the dialogue to learn Spanish “and if they made a mistake, so what. Puppets are never wrong and never get grades.”

And just like students, “senior citizens feel a connection with the puppets when I have them perform,” said Kreps, who sometimes entertains at birthday parties. “The seniors are just like children. They just love for me to put them on their laps.” Her current and past performers include a ballet dancer, a unicycle rider, a lion, a dog, a juggler, a weight lifter and a bunch of clowns. Sometimes she puts on a ventriloquism act with a clown who sits on her knee and talks to her.

Kreps said all of her performing puppets have big eyes and painted eye lashes, her puppeteer trademark.

“I guess I’m still a bit of a child,” said Kreps, whose retired schoolteacher husband, Dave Kreps, 68, helped create and carve all the handmade puppets. “I keep saying I’m not going to perform anymore, but I keep doing it.”

She said they still have a lot of fun performing and get pleasure from people who see them. “But it’s quite a job hauling around the three big suitcases we use for the puppets, stage and audio system,” she admitted.

Even with those difficulties, though, she said, “we continue to get great pleasure performing at schools where the children think our puppets are alive.”

As a parting remark for a visitor, she said, “By the way, make sure you don’t call my puppets dummies.”

Little did Becky Quinn know that her valentine would live in Grand Haven, Mich., the result of a red balloon the 11-year-old Anaheim youngster released with her classmates from Nohl Canyon Elementary School on Feb. 9.

The balloon had her name, the school’s address and a red heart attached to a string to commemorate Heart Awareness Week, but Robert Stebbings, who found the balloon Feb. 19, apparently thought it was a different kind of valentine.

So he wrote this poem to Becky:

Floating through the sky above,

Seeking out a quest of love.

Two people meet not knowing each other,

Bound by love they’re sister and brother.

Thank you for sharing your life in part,

By sending the balloon bearing a heart.

A most unusual thing to find,

A very special Valentine.

“I’m excited,” Becky said.

Virginia G. Carson of Chapman College in Orange believes a lot of students think math and science are “boring, boring, boring.”

Not so, says Carson, chair of the college’s natural science division who helped present the recent colorful Chapman College Science Festival by asking 500 Orange County high school students to pick the subjects they enjoyed most.

“Space” won hands down, so she immediately landed astronaut Lacy Leach as the day’s main speaker. He explained in easy language how space exploration contributed to many of today’s scientific breakthroughs.

Included in the morning event, which also attracted elementary students, were robots, fossil rocks, NASA movies, paper airplane design, an egg drop competition and some awards to top science students.

Acknowledgments--Kathrine Schick, 17, a straight-A student and soccer player at El Toro High School, was named one of five finalists to compete for the All-American Girl of the Year contest in New York City. A prize-winning ceramist, she will compete Wednesday with finalists from San Francisco, Iowa, Illinois and New York for a $5,000 scholarship. Sponsors of the ninth annual competition are Teen Magazine and Noxema Skin Cream.