Friday, June 20, 2008

Where, Oh Where, Is Flat Stanley?

What a fun little unit we are up to!  We bought the picture book, Flat Stanley, and have been enjoying learning about his adventures.  We look forward to buying some of the chapter books about Flat Stanley, too.  This little fellow wakes up one morning crushed flat under a bulletin board.  From that day forward, he is flat, which affords him many adventures.  They include catching bad guys while hiding in a painting, as well as being mailed all over the world.  We decided to make our own Flat Stanley and send him to Italy with my Father and Step-mother.  They will be posing him and taking his photo in famous places along the way.  Talk about a cool way to learn geography!  I offered to go along with Flat Stanley as his nanny, but I don't fit in a suitcase.  We do, however, get to deliver Flat Stanley in person to my parents in the Washington, D.C., area.  We will tour around Washington, D.C., with Flat Stanley before sending him on his journey across the ocean.  We leave tomorrow morning for 6 days.  I'll post his and our adventures next week.


We plan on doing Italy for our Homeschool International Night next fall.  It will be extra special with the loot that the grandparents bring back and all of the fun pictures of Flat Stanley.  My kids are especially excited that my parents get to spend a day in Venice.  Venice is the location of one of the kids' favorite books, Papa Piccolo.  In the drawer where I save research materials and magazines, I was lucky to find a Kids Discover magazine on Venice just waiting for this unit!  Also, Tom Sawyer (6) and Goldilocks (7) are of Northern Italian descent, according to their foster/adoption paperwork so it is nice to be studying Italy.


Here is the picture of our Flat Stanley dressed as a gondolier.





Blessings, Dawn


11 comments:

  1. We did the Flat Stanley project this past spring. We made several of them, and sent them out to about 6 or 7 friends / missionaries we know. We asked them to take photos of themselves and e-mail them to us (so we absorbed the cost of printing them out). It was so fun!


    The really cool thing is that one of our Flat Stanleys was in China for the earthquake, and another one was on the border of Thailand and Myanmar, and "went in" with the missionary to sneak aid to the people who lost their homes, etc. So very cool.


    So far we've received photos from China, Myanmar/ Thailand, Japan, Australia, and Tonga. We will put all these together in a project and let my daughter present it for a 4-H demonstration speech next year.


    You'll have a great time doing it!

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  2. We just LOVE Flat traveling!! Our Flatties have been all over the place, even to Antarcitica!!!! I hope you have fantastic adventures with yours and that you have a great time in Washington DC

    Blessings,

    Jacque

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  3. You have so many fun & creative things going on!

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  4. I'm definitely going to have to look into Flat Stanley! I'd never heard of him before.


    Have enjoyed following your summer "schooling" as the ideas have just been great and sounds like everyone (especially mom) is enjoying it all.


    Janet

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  5. I have always wanted to do the Flat Stanley thing, but my kids said they were to old. You can be sure, though, my grandkids won't be deprived of this wonderful adventure. Hope Stanley has wonderful trips and that he brings back some great pictures and stories.

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  6. That is really cool. If ever Flat Stanley wants to make a journey here we would gladly accommodate him and show him around ;-)

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  7. I have often heard about these projects. Looks like a lot of fun!

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  8. What a cute looking book and prop! What fun about Venice!

    Blessings,

    Laurie

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  9. How cute! I hope you enjoy your travel.

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  10. blessedwith2angelsJune 28, 2008 at 9:01 AM

    Wow, that sounds like lots of fun for Flat Stanley. I can't wait to see the posts of all the things he learns. : )

    Pam

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  11. We did something similar for kids sponsored in a Russian orphanage. Every family was to make (in our case buy because my sewing machine is on the road system) a teddy bear that was then to represent the sponsored child. The bear was poised with family members having a "virtual vacation" and then put together in a slide show to be presented at the orphanage (power point, really) and narrated by letters to from the sponsoring families. It was a little hokey to me because the bear was always supposed to be referred to as "You" and what was done with the family was "We" -- and my sponsored child is now 16... albeit not the most mature 16, being an institution kid... the younger kids especially loved it.

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