Flat Stanley

I was introduced to Flat Stanley by a second grade teacher in the 1970’s. The 1964 story was imaginative and a great introduction to early chapter books. Along with the Littles, Flat Stanley was what got me hooked on the fantasy genre at an early age. The story was engaging and later got me interested in reading longer books like Stuart Little that had the same quality of adventure and strange unbelievable circumstances that some how seemed acceptable within the bindings of the book.

Since 1995 Dale Hubert has been running the Official Flat Stanley Project to promote literacy, interaction, and geography among children. There is his official site and hundreds of blogs and websites that work to promote the idea of children sharing some version of a Flat Stanley character with family and friends and receiving pictures and written details of their character’s travels. Stanley has traveled far and wide visiting with celebrities, Presidents, and even making a trip in the Shuttle.

This is a great project for schools, home schoolers and parents to consider trying with their own children. It is simple to start and a great way to open communication with relatives and friends that might not have an easy time starting a conversation with your child. The Flat Stanley project is relatively simple. The flat character is mailed to the recipient who has agreed to take pictures and document the journey. A virtual flat doll can be sent and documented as well. This is a great way for children and those who they are distant from to communicate. While someone may not normally talk to a child about their garden or normal daily activities a doll can open up communication and children do seem to be more interested in Gram’s garden when Stanley or Jane is there. (Children can name the doll what ever they wish.) It is also a way to introduce the child to an area they may not get to visit often. Local areas which we are used to seeing all the time can be interesting for kids to see pictures of especially when attached to a doll’s adventure.

I found some unique patterns for the doll to choose from and you are encouraged to make your own. Dale Hubert is even moving to travel bears and I’ve included that link here. Consider a small toy that has a connection with the child and the adults that will be communicating and that can become their connection for writing to each other. A beanie dog is welcome more places than a real dog and its regular adventures can become a means of regular communication between adult and child. Just a note about communication, adults need encouragement to continue the process. If your child is not responding to the activity it can be hard to get the other party to continue. It does not require a huge response. You can write what your child dictates, have your child draw pictures, and ask questions. However, it is hard to continue with no response at all. Read More

Flat Stanley Information

Flat Stanley Curriculum

The Official Flat Stanley Project

Boston Globe Article "Where in the World is Flat Stanley?"

Yahoo Flat Stanley Groups

Flat Travelers Homeschool

Flat Travelers

Flat Stanley Materials

Create a Journal

Flat Stanley CD Travel Case

Flat Stanley Journal

Flat Stanley Journal Part 1 Flat Stanley Journal Part 2

Flat Stanley Story Paper

Flat Stanley Story Paper

Flat Stanley Templates

Flat Stanley Template

Flat Stanley Double Sided Template

Flat Stanley Template Official

Making Friends Templates

Travel Teddy

Flat Stanley Suggestions For Organization

Bella Online Article

Flat Stanley Sample Letter

Flat Stanley Sample Letter for Participants

Other Flat Stanley Activities

Flat Stanley Activities from abcteach

Flat Stanley Quiz

Picture credit konaboys flickr.com

Help Your Child Get Ready for the Back to School Essay

In many schools some version of the Back to School essay is standard. It generally has something to do with what the child did during summer vacation. For some students the “essay” is merely a few sentences strung together to reintroduce the concepts of brainstorming and sentence structure. For others it is a more detailed assignment to provide a writing sample for the beginning of the year. What ever the level of expectations for the assignment, parents can help children prepare in a simple, easy, and relaxing manner before returning to school.

Before panic emerges we will not be discussing essay writing or practice essays in this blog. That is counter productive and tends to just make kids frustrated and bored with the whole writing process before they even get to school.

Instead I am going to talk about ways to activate prior knowledge. One of the challenges as teachers when we use this topic is while many children have had active summers, when presented with a topic about summer say they did nothing. So one of the first steps in helping your child prepare is to talk about what your child enjoyed this summer. It should a casual conversation, not a quiz. Try to generate some ideas and stories about the things you did as a family, adventures at camp, outings with friends, or trips to see family. These are things you want to be fresh in your child’s mind.

Take out some family photographs from the summer. Pictures are a great way to trigger memories and get children talking. They can also be a wonderful way to work on categorizing. Talk about the photographs as stories. Younger children may pick one photograph that they will write their sentence on. Older children may end up with three photographs that best tell the story of summer and these will be the three main ideas. Again you are not working on writing at all at this point just generating memories and helping to organize ideas into categories.

This may be a great time to make a summer scrapbook with your child organizing photographs and having your child help label them and putting descriptions about what happened where to help all of you remember later. You can transcribe what the child says. The focus at this point is oral generation of stories. If the child wants to write by all means encourage it. However, the key is generating ideas and stories, not forcing the writing process. The more able your child gets at generating stories orally, the easier it gets to work with moving that towards the physical act of writing. If you can improve the rehearsal process, you can have a wonderful impact on the actual writing that occurs.

Even if the child’s teacher decides not to use this assignment this year, you have helped your child organize summer memories and taught valuable strategies for brainstorming and prewriting for future endeavors. The more you rehearse organizational strategies the more natural they become.