The Great American Postcard Exchange

While enjoying a few school days at the beach late in the Summer I came across an opportunity for our family to join a postcard exchange with other Classical Conversations homeschool families in the United States.  Our home state was already spoken for, but we were aloud to adopt another state.  Out of the handful of adoptable states left my children chose Connecticut.  We decided that we should learn more about our adopted state before sending postcards, so this became our first Friday with Friends class for the school year.

Younger siblings are welcome to attend the class.  Another parents helps lead their activities and supervise playtime. 

I always write out the schedule for the afternoon on a large white board.  This helps keep me on schedule, allows the kids to begin working immediately when they arrive, and helps anyone who may get to the class late to jump in on the next activity.  We typically begin with an activity the kids can do in pairs or small groups together.  

For our study on Connecticut they the children began finding facts about the state posted around the house as soon as they arrived.  I found the facts pre-made on teachers pay teachers.  All I had to do was print and laminate them.  (I probably didn't have to laminate them, but I love my laminator!)

After finding facts we came together as a group to discuss our favorite facts about the state, what the postcard exchange was, and what we would write on our postcards.  We also completed a longitude and latitude activity together which created a dot to dot of Connecticut.

Finally, the time had come to write postcards.  Each child chose a favorite fact about Connecticut and copied it onto 3-5 postcards.  A lot of the kids were also very excited to choose where they wanted to send their postcard, and address it. 

While the older kids wrote and addressed the post cards their younger siblings put stamps on them.  The younger kids also helped organize the postcards we had received, and colored the states we had received postcards from on a map. 

We are enjoying receiving postcards from all across the United States.  While Connecticut is not our home state, we now have a greater understading and appreciation of our adopted state.