Students Flatten Themselves

To Learn About The Continents

By Eliza Hallabeck

As of Friday, January 16, Wesley Learning Center Kindergarteners had received nearly 100 postcards from all over the world. Willing participants in this year’s “Flat Children” project have represented all seven continents.

“This is the third year we have done this,” said Randi Rote, the class’s teacher. “This class got the most postcards ever.”

 Madeline Patrick said her favorite postcard came to her from Germany.

“We said we need postcards from all around the world,” said Madeline when asked how the project got started.

Ms Rote said the class started working on the project, which is a spin on the Flat Stanley Project, which encourages children to send mail based on the 1964 book Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown, in November.

Flat Stanley, is about a boy who becomes flattened by a poster board and subsequently finds himself capable of many new things. After being flattened, Stanley learns he can go under doors, and be shipped to his friends through the mail.

The Flat Stanley Project encourages children to send Flat Stanley in mail to friends, and each friend documents their time spent with Flat Stanley.

Ms Rote’s class created flat versions of themselves, or “Flat Children,” before mailing them to family and friends around the world.

John Echeverrin said his favorite postcard he received for the project came from a friend who used to attend school with the class at Wesley Learning Center, but who now lives in Japan.

Peter Reelick said his favorite postcard came from his uncle in Idaho.

Peter said his uncle wrote “he’s going to come to my house next summer.”

“We learned about different countries,” Emmerson Helms said about the project. She also said she received two postcards from Tokyo, Japan.

Ms Rote said postcards from Florida outnumbered postcards sent from any other area. She said it took the class one day to flatten themselves as a project. The students cut people shapes out of paper and used photos of themselves for the flat children’s heads.

Each time the class received a postcard that card was added to a wall in the classroom with a map of the world on it.