Summer Fun: Day 6

On Side Note: We had so much fun with this summer that the blog fell behind. So after much complaining from my mother (love you), I figured I better get us up to date. So be prepared for post overload…

Flat Stanley (7/12/11)

I have always loved the books about Flat Stanley. They are about a boy who is flattened in his sleep by a bulletin board and sent on multiple adventures through the mail. As a teacher, it’s an activity gold mine—perfect for teaching social studies and geography.

image source

I had heard that there was an online exchange community where you could send your own Flat Stanley to a pen pal. I did a little research and found The Flat Stanley Project at FlatterWorld.com

Basically, you create a Flat Stanley or a flat version of yourself and send it to a pen pal. The pen pal takes your Flat Stanley on adventures around their area, taking pictures and writing about their experience and then send Stanley, photos and their letter back to you. FlatterWorld.com helps with a community board to set up international exchanges between parents, teachers, classes, and anyone who just wants to participate.  I was able to find a librarian in New York (with a small group of kids) willing to exchange. I also found a ranch hand at a cowboy and scout ranch in New Mexico willing to let our Stanleys come visit her and her scout friends.

So I dug through my classroom library (currently in storage) and found my Flat Stanley picture book. Then, I went to FlatStanleyBooks.com, the official website for the Flat Stanley book series. 

They have tons of Flat Stanley activities as well as a template to make your own Flat Stanley to make and send on adventures. We printed off our own and colored. We each made two: one to send to NY and one to send to NM.

We took pictures and wrote letters to introduce ourselves and Stanley to our new pen pals.

We had planned on making a trip to the post office that day but Bee was asleep. When a toddler is asleep, DON’T mess with the schedule! (Trust me, we’ve gone down THAT road before….) Instead, we printed off some of the Flat Stanley activities to work on until everyone decided they had better things to do. Oh well…

Check out both websites they are great resources. If your child is not really old enough to do a pen pal exchange (it was a stretch with our 4 and 5 year old), you can take Stanley on family adventures documenting the places you go and things you do over the summer. Plenty of fun all around. You could seriously take an entire week or more doing all kinds of  Flat Stanley related activities. Like I said…Gold.Mine.