The Mail Project

"Writing" or dictating letters as a class is a great way to keep the children's interest in mail and meet literacy standards.

When Peter, the "reptile guy," visited the school, there was great excitement. The class loved his visit, and so the teachers initiated a writing activity in which the children dictated a thank-you letter to him for visiting with them and bringing a variety of reptiles to see.

Afterward, the teachers asked the preschoolers, "How can we get this letter to Peter?" The children began eagerly sharing what they knew about mail. Some of their thoughts included:

When the class wrote a thank-you letter to a visitor, it sparked great interest into what happened to the mail after it was put in the mailbox.

The lively discussion caused the teachers to examine the topic of mail as a class project. They felt that the topic would be an excellent choice because most children had experiences with mail and questions about it. Although the topic had been initiated by the teachers when they asked the children about getting a letter to the reptile man, the children had demonstrated intense interest. The teachers determined the topic was practical because there were many accessible resources at school and in the community, including post offices, libraries, parents, other teaching teams, and school staff. To help them decide if the topic was appropriate for their class, the teachers created a list of possible things that the children would be able to see, hold, and touch:

The teachers created an anticipatory web to explore all the different ideas and directions they could take in a project about mail. To get all the children involved with the topic, the teachers drew upon the preschoolers' common experiences with the mail process and searched for relevant and meaningful activities that naturally occurred in daily life.

After the children had written their thank-you letter to Peter, they created observational drawings of mailboxes and wrote letters to mail home. For a field trip, the preschoolers visited the post office to view what happens to the mail after it is sent. They toured the facility, posed questions to the postal workers, and watched various machines in action. After their exhilarating visit, the children even made up a song about the post office!

After much class discussion and help from their teachers, the preschoolers began to construct their own post office. They started by building a complicated conveyor belt and then added a sticker machine, a buzzer machine, a mailbox, signs, and even a mirror.

When it was time to end the project, the teachers asked the children if they would like to share their post office with the rest of the school. The preschoolers prepared their post office machines for display in the school's Town Square for everyone to enjoy. The staff at the school supported the project's culmination by adding their own artifacts and encouraging other students to participate in the post office activities. Later, the youngsters created a display in the school's main hallway to continue to show others what they had learned about the mail.

The topic of mail was extremely integrative with the Ohio Early Learning Content Standards in social studies, science, English language arts, and mathematics; the Creative Curriculum goals in the physical, social-emotional, cognitive domains; and the Head Start Learning Outcomes. The children's activities naturally flowed from their interest in mail.