Grasshopper New Media Presents...

Have you ever heard of The Flat Stanley Project? It is a program created by a third grade teacher to help students learn to write letters to each other. I think that letter writing is an important skill to learn, but I also think that Flat Stanley could be used for so much more. In fact, let’s bring Stanley home this summer and discover America (or even other countries!) while our children have a blast showing Stanley around. Better yet? Let’s do what Leslie did and make a Flat ______ (insert your child’s name).

Here’s what you’ll need:

Heavy cardstock

Scissors

Markers/Crayons

Glue

A picture of your child’s face

Large envelopes

Postage Stamps

Here’s what we’re going to do:

First, you’ll need to draw a gingerbread man shape on your paper. He is going to need to fit in your envelope, so don’t make him too terribly big, but we don’t want him to be tiny either. After you have drawn him, cut him out and let your child draw clothes on him. This cut-out is going to represent your child, so let them “dress” him (or her!) however they want. Next, you’ll take a picture of your child and cut the face out and glue it on to the paper head. Now, instead of Flat Stanley, you have a Flat Sally or Flat Bill or Flat WHOEVER. Easy, huh? (If you have access to a laminator, it wouldn’t hurt to laminate the little guy.)

Here’s the tricky part. You need to find somewhere to send your Flat Stanley. Have a blog? It shouldn’t be hard for you to find people across the country to send Flat Stanley too. I do, of course, recommend only sending your address to people that you trust, or even using a post office box for this project. If you have family scattered across the country, call them up and ask if they’d be willing to host Flat Stanley for a little bit.

While Flat Stanley is visiting ask his host family to take pictures of him doing fun things with them, to include stories of things he did, places he visited and different types of foods he ate. Ask them to send back a couple of area post cards or pictures. Our goal here is give our children the experience of visiting the area, without actually spending all the money to get them there.

It would be nice to include a self addressed stamped envelope so that Stanley won’t be much of a burden on his host family.

This is a great activity for kids. They think its fun and I think its educational. Sure, they aren’t getting the same experience they would if they were to actually travel to these places themselves, but they are still learning about different areas of our country in a way that will stick with them. Why not have them study the state that Stanley is visiting? (What’s the state bird? The state song? What’s the population of the state? The capital of the state?) Or print out a map and see if Stanley can visit all fifty states? The possibilities for learning are endless!

This idea was blatantly stolen from Leslie of My Mommy’s Place (with her permission, of course). You can read about what she is doing with Flat Julia here.

by Karly Campbell

Photo graciously provided by SheepGuardingLlama, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved

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