How did this get started?
When I signed us up for a postcard exchange a few weeks ago, I didn't realize how much work I was getting myself into! First, it's rather difficult to find postcards nowadays if you are not in a touristy area. I finally found some at the truck stops a few miles down the expressway. I picked up as many different ones as I could find thinking that the kids could choose a favorite or two and I would later go back and pick up enough to mail for the exchange.BOY! Was I wrong. The kids took one look and said, "Wow Mom! What a great idea! We can do 49 different postcards; 1 for each different state!" Considering I had hit 4 different truck stops to get about 14 different postcards, I thought this was a terrible idea! The more the kids chattered, the more I realized it was about to become a mission. A trip to Big Bone Lick State Park, the Newport Aquarium, and numerous bookstores, gas stations and other places, I hit 50 cards the same day I received the finalized list of addresses. Whew!
As the kids looked at the cards, they were so excited.
"Mom, no one will see ALL the different cards though. It's a shame that everyone is only getting 1." ~Matthew
"Ooh, Mom! We could put pictures of all of them on a web-page and show everyone!" ~Emma
I guess at least I didn't have to buy 49 of each. I spent Friday night scanning in postcards, ONE..AT..A..TIME because even though my printer all in one is amazing, the scanner on the little crummy one it replaced was better. I could place multiple items on the old one and it would scan them all at once as separate entities. :( Oh well.
So, here's the beginning of our blog, our postcard exchange and American History blog. Some posts will be by me (mom, Priscilla) others will be by the kids: Matthew (11), Emma (8), but probably not Heather (22). There may be an occasional one by Dad (Mark) and he'll definitely be doing tech support along the way.
I would like to scan in each postcard as we receive them and show some of the pages we do to learn about the states along the way. I'm definitely posting links to the cool printables I found in the last couple weeks, as soon as I figure out how to do a links page...
2 comments:
We just received your packet. My daughter's excited that you sent a map and a postcard. she said AND?! but I didn't have time to show it to her really yet, she saw it briefly while driving the 2 miles between the mailbox and her Summer activity.
I hope you get alot of penpals for the kids. My oldest is 6 so I'm going to wait till she's older before introducing the idea of penpalls to her.
My kids have been to half the states already but last year we realized that we travel just north of or just east of Kentucky when we leave the northeast on our travels. So last year when we went to tennessee we drove straight north through Kentucky on our way home. It was worth adding 50 miles to the trip and we spent a day at a really nice children's museum. so we can finally say we've been to Kentucky too.
I hope you received our postcard from NY state, we sent it on Monday last week.
I recently bought bedding that came in a nice cloth pouch, assuming all the postcards fit in it, I'm going to put them in there and the year's date, we can use them to review the states we travel through to go on vacation and also social studies as the kids get older.
thanks so much for your packet, so much more than I expected.
valerie
We did get your card. Last night we did our books on Kentucky and probably tonight or tomorrow we will do New York. The kids are going to write some entries soon, they were outlining some thoughts last night before they got distracted. I think I'm going to scan in the cards we receive each week or so. We've gotten 4 so far. Now that I have the lap booking stuff printed, they're doing a book for each that we receive.
We haven't traveled much, just a few states. We are starting to think in terms of hitting historical places that we'd like to take field trips to. Next spring, I would love to plan a trip to Washington DC.
Thanks for commenting...it's my first one ^_^
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