What's your calling card?

a Tuesday (or anytime) craft for summer visits

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Hi Frog Troublers! This is a post for kids and crafty grown-ups!

The other day, Bea and Harriet and I were at the neighborhood pool we just joined. An unspeakable thing had happened (!), requiring everyone to evacuate the big pool, and so we were hanging out in the baby pool while people worked on the big pool with scoops and buckets and chemicals.

Some kids found a frog near the fence! Or was it a toad? It was bumpy and dry-skinned, like a toad—but a great climber, with pads on its feet. We quickly identified it as a gray tree-frog.

Driving home (we decided not to get back in, after all), I said, you know what we need, Bea? A calling card!

What’s a calling card? (she asked)

Good question!

Your parents probably know them as business cards, and may keep a few in their wallets or purses. But in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (way before your grandparents—or even great-grandparents—were born), calling cards were an accessory for fancy people. Also called visiting cards or visiting tickets, they were similar in size to today’s business cards, and people would present them to their hosts when they stopped by for a visit. If the hosts weren’t home, they would leave them behind, and the hosts could also display them on a little table near the door. So if we wanted to show off, for example, a visit from Louise or Max, we’d just put their cards right at the top. Maybe on a little silver tray! Some of them were quite fancy, engraved or shaped like fans (see this post for some wonderful photos and a history of calling cards)!

But over time, they fell out of fashion. I was thinking that if we had a calling card, we could hand it to people we meet who might want to know more about things like, say, identifying frogs. Or reading about nature!

Today a “calling card” has two other meanings:

1. In a crime (I bet this is in a Nancy Drew book somewhere), it’s an item left behind that signals that the criminal was there. So, for Harriet, this type of calling card might be “naked Barbie dolls” or “bath toy in the living room.”

2. A calling card is also a special talent or ability that is associated with a person. Harriet learned to speak bald eagle yesterday, so her calling card here could be “animal communication.”

Now that it’s possible to visit with people—or at least back yards and playgrounds—we thought it would be fun to make calling cards featuring our calling cards—that is, announcing our special talents and skills. Bea and Harriet and I made some (see below) for the FTT.

Here are the steps:

1. Gather your supplies. You need:

-thick paper (we like watercolor paper, but the paperboard from cereal boxes would be a great way to recycle)

-scissors

-markers/pens/pencils/crayons

Nice to have: glue sticks, stamps or stickers, watercolor paint and brushes, magazines you’re allowed to cut up.

2. What’s your calling card? Think about what you’re good at, or could help someone with, and write it down. Two examples might be:

Beatrice

-gentle spider relocation (including wolf spiders)

-book monster

-myth expert

Belle

-four leaf clover finder

-book monster

-river journeys

3. Write this down or get your mom or dad to let you type it, and copy it many times. Print it out, cut it, and/or glue it.

4. Decorate your card, front and back! You can make each one different, or try to make them all the same. Bea and I experimented with drawings, stamps, and collage. You can also round or snip the corners, or cut out different shapes. My friend Ansel Elkins (a wonderful poet) used to hand out circular business cards, which I thought was so cool. If your mom or dad says it’s okay, add their email or a way to get in touch—this is handy in case you meet a kindred spirit.

5. Don’t forget to put them in your bag and take them with you the next time you go visiting!

(Teachers: I think this would be a fun start-of-year activity, or a good literacy extension for characters in a book.)

On Friday we’ll share some favorite outdoor games and art supplies. But in the meantime, we’re wondering, what’s your calling card, or best talent?

(Harriet’s current best talent is talking to bald eagles in their language—that’s a juvenile on the tree branch.)