Kindergarteners Receive Letters

From Around The World

By Martha Coville

At Wesley Learning Center, kindergarten teacher Randi Rote teaches her students an exciting hands-on lesson about the seven continents.

Student Jack Lydon explained how the lesson began.

“We sent letters to everyone,” he said. “We made paper gingerbread men and sent them all around the world.” Ms Rote said, “What we did was, we sent out gingerbread men at Christmas time, and we asked the people we sent them to, to send a postcard back to tell us a little bit about where they live.”

The goal, she said, was to collect postcards from all seven continents. So far, they have collected postcards from Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Australia. So far, her class has received 77 postcards from the students’ relatives, family friends, and friends of friends.

James Tibolla received a letter from Hawaii.

“There lots of palm trees,” he said. “You can put coconuts in the mail there. You have to use a special pen to write on them. It’s hot all the time, and there’s lots of water there, and you can surfboard there.”

Christopher Koobatian received a letter from Australia. He said he learned that “it’s warm there and you can go swimming after school.”

Gracie O’Connell told The Bee that she received letters from South Africa, and from Disney World, which she had visited when she was 4.

“Mickey Mouse sent me a letter,” she said proudly. Mickey said that “It’s really awesome there. In the summer it’s really fun, and they have log flumes, and a lot of things that are really fun.”

Ms Rote said that two letters from Europe were sent to the class. “My husband was in Germany, and he sent us a postcard,” she said. Picturesque photographs of old wooden houses and mills decorated the postcard.

Another letter, from a “friend of a friend in France” read “Bonne et heureuse année, d’une amie d’un ami,” which means, “A happy and prosperous New Year, from a friend of a friend.”

Other letters came from Brazil, and another came from Asia, Ms Rote said.

The coup de grace, she said, would be a letter from Antarctica. But even without a postcard, her students have learned about the mostly unpopulated southern continent. Ryan Stutman said, “Antarctica is at the bottom [of the globe] and the North Pole is at the top. There are puffins at the North Pole, and penguins live at the South Pole.”