Tuesday, January 5, 2010

The Flat Stanley Project

Over Christmas break, Kylie and I participated in The Flat Stanley Project.

Do you remember the book Flat Stanley? It's about a boy whose bulletin board fell on him during the night, and flattened him like a pancake. He discovered he could visit his friends by mailing himself in an envelope.

I had never heard of the Flat Stanley Project. My friend Pam in Florida emailed me and said that her son Braden, who is in second grade, was doing a Flat Stanley project for his class, and she asked if she could mail him to us. I said it sounded like fun.

Basically, we got to take Flat Stanley along with us on our adventures during Christmas and take pictures. Today we will fill out his travelogue, which includes the date he arrived at our house, our location, the weather, and a brief list of his adventures with us. I thought I'd share what we did with Flat Stanley while he was here.



The day he arrived, he wanted to go out and stand in the snow. Then he decided his feet were cold.



Here he is with Kylie next to our Christmas tree (which is going to get taken down this weekend, I SWEAR, even if I have to chuck it out the window).




Since Kylie had never read Flat Stanley and didn't know the story, we went to the library, found the book, and read it together.



Flat Stanley went with us to Denver Zoo Lights. The problem was though, if I used a flash, you couldn't see the lights...and if I didn't use a flash, you couldn't see Stanley. I opted for seeing the lights.


The day we went to the lake on walked on the ice? Flat Stanley went with us. He walked on the ice too.



He especially liked tubing in the snow.



Hopefully, Flat Stanley will be mailed back to Tampa today. When he gets there, Braden will take him back to school and mark our location on a map. He also gets to write a story about Flat Stanley's adventures in Colorado. I printed out all the above pictures and will be mailing them back with Stanley.

I think this is a really neat reading project for lower elementary kids. Have any of your kids every done this?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

My kids haven't done this, but a friend of mine had her class do this when she taught 3rd grade. One of my son's friends was sent a flat Stanley by his cousin, so we know of the project, which I think is great!

Love your recent posts, but was sad to hear about your husband's job. I hope things work out soon.

Rachel
in Grand Forks, ND

Mary~Momathon said...

My nephew did the Flat Stanley project too! He mailed his Flat Stanley to Grandma (my mom) where he had lots of fun adventures. Then I came to visit so we kidnapped him and brought him to California where he had more fun adventures. His travel log ended up being a binder full of stories, brochures, photos. It was so much fun!

I had to scan him and make duplicates because we nearly beheaded him when he flew away in the wind and we had to chase him down like a tumbleweed. It was fun having duplicates because then we could put him in crazy situations and not worry about his fate.

He was a fun little dude! Glad you enjoyed your visit from the flat one!

Fannie said...

OMG - Yes! In fact when Precious Oldest and her friend went to Europe last summer? They brought two other friends with them. Flat Hannah and Flat Bridget. Same Flat body but with pictures of their faces. She has a whole album dedicated to them on Facebook - hysterical!

Anonymous said...

This sounds like such a cool project - how fun!

Dawn in D.C. said...

What a neat idea! I'd never heard of it before, but it sounds like such fun.

Jenn @ Juggling Life said...

It is a really cute project.

In Kindergarten the kids took Curious George home for the weekend and chronicled his adventures. That was fun, too.