Learning made a visual experience

Stacy J. Willis

Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999 | 10:40 a.m.

Berdie Roebeck is wearing her best outfit and scurrying across her front lawn with a miniature plastic pig in her hand.

The pig belongs inside the Farm Animals display that she made 20 years ago to teach children the difference between farms and ranches.

"Can you believe how many children today don't know the difference?" she says, busily affixing the 2-inch pig next to a plastic fence inside the cardboard diorama.

The 80-year-old Roebeck recently displayed some of her life's work in her yard -- for anyone who happened to pass by her northwest Las Vegas home. Her 30 dioramas -- balanced on tables made from upside down garbage cans and two-by-fours -- together created a full installation of folk art.

"My whole life has been for children," says Roebeck, a longtime Las Vegan who taught in Clark County public schools, Trinity Christian classrooms and the Children's Campus -- a Strip pre-school for the children of celebrities such as Bob Newhart and Engelbert Humperdinck.

The dioramas are scenes meant to make learning more visual for children. Based on topics that range from minerals to housekeeping, the Ten Commandments to textiles, they are built inside apple boxes and constructed with hundreds of different materials -- pipe cleaners, pebbles, plants, miniatures, buttons -- even photographs. "I just think children learn better this way. So I made it a hobby. Instead of watching TV at night, I made these," she said.

Roebeck has four grown children and still teaches, volunteering her services at church camps and Sunday schools.

"We only have so long on this earth, and we have to make an impact in whatever way we can.

"I'm just creative. What can I say?"