Social Studies Project For Kids: Flat Family Project

How it started

A few years ago I found out about a site that focused on the book Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown. People sent cutouts of Flat Stanley around the globe and had pictures taken with them. This gave me the idea to send a flat family to other places.
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For several years I had been focusing on family heritage and I had done projects that helped my students to celebrate their heritage. This idea seemed to fit perfectly.

The steps we took

The children sent their flat families to friends or family that lived in other parts of the country or the world. They sent a journal and asked for the recipients to take pictures of the family doing things and then to return them to our school.

We started by creating a journal to send to others. In it we told them a bit about our family and we included a drawing of our family. We also included a self addressed return envelope for the recipient to send back the completed journal in. 

In order to know where to send the envelope, a letter was sent to the parents to explain what we were doing and also to get some possible addresses for family members in other parts of the country or world. 

The project went so well, that I did it again two years later with the same type of results. It was necessary to wait two years because I had a split class and some of the students were in my class two years in a row.

​This is one project that was a great success and definitely a keeper. I would love to hear about it if you decide to try it with your class.

Many students received memory books, postcards, pictures, special messages, and other memorabilia that connected them with the recipients. There was always great excitement when a brown envelope arrived with a student's name on it.

Check out the flat family project at my TeachersPayTeachers store by clicking on the image above.