Flat Traveling is an idea based on the book “Flat Stanley” by Jeff Brown. Stanley is a boy who gets flattened when a bulletin board falls on his head. He then gets to have all sorts of great adventures as a flat boy. One of his adventures is to visit a friend in California via the postal service.
The idea started with the official Flat Stanley project. Classrooms full of kids trade “flats” to learn about life in other parts of the country and world. The original project has spawned and now there are a variety of flat traveling programs.
To start your flat adventures, it is easiest to join a group. Yahoo has several flat exchanging groups as do other websites like Making Friends. It is best to know in advance the expectations of the group for when you host a flat. Some groups require that you take a certain number of pictures, send back souvenirs, or make sure that everything fits into a certain size envelope. Think about what you’re able to do before committing.
When you join a group they will have specific directions on how to make your flat traveler. We have hosted a Stanley, as well as Thomas the tank engine, several rodents, and miniature versions of the sender.
When you host, your child keeps a journal of what you do with the flat each day. Take lots of pictures and then send him home after a couple months! You can collect postcards, brochures or mementos to send along too. I once bought t-shirts for $1 each and sent them back with the flats.
So why go through all this trouble when you could just read about different places? First of all, it is a great booster for writing skills. I admit that I do quite a bit of the journaling for our flat travelers. But my kids (ages 5 and 7) also do some writing and what’s better–they are excited about doing it. It is an absolutely painless way of getting my kids to practice writing skills.
Because it is exciting to receive packages from other places, my kids love learning their geography and practicing map skills. Every time one of our flats returns home, we put all the postcards brochures and goodies into a scrapbook. The kids love seeing the flats that they made in different places in the world. So far our flats have been horse back riding, milked a cow, visited a castle in England, saw a real Scotsman wearing a real kilt (something that my son just found hilarious), and they are currently packing a flat to go to China! I also get to build up a nice set of files on all the places we visit which will be useful when we study them again in later grades.
You can set up your project so that you visit all 50 states or you can ask someone to host your flat when you are studying that particular country. In either case, flat traveling is an exciting way to study geography and practice writing skills.