First school project - Flat Stanley!

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Maggie's reading class had read the book Flat Stanley and was preparing to send their own Flat Stanleys around the world - or at least around our part of it - for a series of adventures the students would later present to the class. Well, today is the day! Stanley projects were due today, and this has been Maggie's first real school project.

We mailed Flat Stanley to my friends the McDonah's, who live in Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada (and run the gorgeous Belgravia B&B). While Stanley #1 enjoyed a month away from home, a second Stanley stayed in Chattanooga and experienced some "typical" things in Maggie's life.

When I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Maggie would be doing a presentation to the other first-graders, she got pretty nervous - she didn't want to get in front of the class and talk! I tried telling her that it was just like show-and-tell, except that instead of choosing what she'd show, she'd be telling about her Flat Stanley project. No good. The teacher had given the students the freedom to be creative in presenting their projects to the class, so I suggested a story book. Maggie could write a story about Stan's adventures, using photos as illustrations, and when it came time to do her presentation she could just read the class the story ... thus avoiding the fear of extemporaneous speaking. Again, no good. She hemmed and hawed and finally decided to make a two-sided poster.

Stanley goes to Canada!

Since this was her first project, I wasn't sure how much I should help her or whether she should do most herself. But seriously, she's just in kindergarten, so I figured a little help was OK. I foraged through my scrapbooking supplies and rounded up lots of alphabet stickers for the poster's titles (though she chose which ones we used); we stuck the letters on together. I found the Canada name and maple leaf graphic online, as well as the Canada/U.S. map. While she cut out the name Canada and the leaves, I marked Chattanooga and Truro on the map; she also wrote the summary in the center of the page. It reads, "Flat Stanley visited our friends in Nova Scotia, Canada. Here are some of the things he did while he was there - camping, basketball, orienteering, spelling bee, piano lessons, Curling Hall of Fame. We mailed Stanley to Canada. It cost $26 and took him one week to get there." Finally, she decided where the pictures would go.

Stanley stays in Chattanooga!

The Chattanooga side of the poster shows some of the things we did with Stanley here in our town. He visited the Extreme Home Makeover site a few weeks ago, meeting a local news personality while there. We also took him to the Tennessee Aquarium, where he rode the tall escalator and saw penguins and stingrays. Finally, he enjoyed more mundane activities like tree-climbing and bike-riding. On this poster, Maggie wrote the captions for each picture.

This morning, Maggie woke up to an email from Stanley himself!! She was especially excited to learn that when Stanley arrived in Truro, there were two feet of snow on the ground, that his host family has an ice skating rink in their backyard, and that one of his host "sisters" - Sarah, also age 6 - speaks French almost entirely at school! Here is Stanley's letter:

Dear Maggie,

I have been having so much fun in Nova Scotia which is on the east coast of Canada. It is colder here than it is in Chattanooga and I was surprised to find out that there was about two feet of snow on the ground when I got here!

The town where I spent most of my time is called Truro. Truro is located at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. The Bay of Fundy is famous for many reasons, but most of all because the highest recorded tides in the world were here. The difference between high and low tide was 56 feet. Something some people don’t understand is that there are two high tides and two low tides each day. When the tide in the Bay of Fundy is low, you can walk on the ocean floor for miles, but when the tide comes in, the water is very deep. You have to be careful not to get caught because the water rushes in so quickly. The amount of water that flows in and out of the Bay of Fundy each day is equal to the volume of water in every river in the world combined!! Right now, the Bay of Fundy is the only Canadian entry in the new Seven Wonders of the World contest. In Nova Scotia, they are able to create electricity from the power of the Bay of Fundy Tides. http://votemyfundy.com/galleries/galleries.html

The house where I am staying has four children and they even have their own skating rink in the backyard! They have an outdoor chimney beside the rink, so when we’re finished skating, we sit around the fire and drink hot chocolate with marshmallows.

While I was here, I got to go winter camping with the Cub Scouts. We had a lot of fun and I got to go orienteering and snowshoe. Can you see all the snow and water in my photos?

The children in this house, Evan, Alex, Sarah & Olivia participate in a lot of activities. They play basketball, play the piano, sing, dance (both Highland dancing and ballet), play drums in the school band, and curl. Curling is a game you play on the ice with special stones that weigh 45 pounds. Some of the people on the team sweep the ice with brooms to guide the rocks! It is cold here for half of the year, so they have a lot of fun activities to do outside. In the summer it gets warm here, but rarely as warm as it gets in Chattanooga. Not many people here have air conditioning because even when it is hot, there is usually a breeze.

I went with my host family to a special town named Lunenburg for a curling tournament. Lunenburg is a special fishing village which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The famous ship on the Canadian dime, named “the Bluenose” was built in Lunenburg. We weren’t able to see it because it is being fixed, but if you’re interested, there is a webcam where you can watch the restoration: http://www.novascotiawebcams.com/south-shore/bluenose-ii-stern-view.html

Another fun thing I got to do while I was here was participate in the Provincial spelling bee. (In Canada, they are called provinces instead of states!) The Spelling Bee included children from Grade Four to Grade Eight. The girl who won was in Grade Eight and she won for the second year in a row. Her championship word was “Harbinger.” It was a lot of fun! I especially loved the signs they made for me when they were cheering me on!

School in Nova Scotia is a lot of fun. There are almost 600 children in the elementary school in Truro from Primary to Grade Five. Children here start school when they are five. School starts the first week of September and then will finish the last week of June. The children here learn both French & English in school. My host sister, Sarah is in French Immersion which means most of her school day is in French. It was fun to listen to her reading some of her French stories to me!

Some of my favourite Nova Scotian foods are lobster, scallops and maple syrup! If I were here just a little bit longer, I’d be able to watch them make maple syrup. Within the next week or so the weather will be warm enough that the sap will start to run in the maple trees. That is what is used to make maple syrup.

Thank you for sending me here. I will be home soon with some souvenirs from my trip that you can share with your class. If you have any other questions about Nova Scotia, you can send them to my host family. I hope that you are feeling better soon! Maybe someday you will be able to visit Nova Scotia too!

Love,
Stanley

I think I've loved this project more than Maggie! It's been so neat learning more about my friend Anne's life, and I can't wait to visit school next week to see the other students' Flat Stanley projects. I'm not sure where the other Stanleys went, but I know that at least one met a Pulitzer Prize-winning author!

Huge thanks to Anne and her family for helping so enthusiastically with this project - I hope it was fun for them and not a complete headache. Stanley happened to arrive a few days after Anne had unexpected gallbladder surgery; between this, four kids, running a bed and breakfast, and teaching tourism classes, I'm sure it wasn't easy for her to juggle one. more. thing. on the agenda. This just shows what a GREAT friend she is!! Annie, you rock ... I am in your debt!