I have a confession to make: I get a little teary-eyed when I see a child writing (or receiving) a postcard for the first time. You can almost see the switch going off in their heads when they realize that some sort of magic is going on behind the scenes… they have so many questions! How is this postcard getting across the world? What is the stamp for? How did it land on our mailbox? And when is the next one coming?! :)
So when I saw the pictures that Arlene (aka whodalalee) submitted to our Facebook page… well, you can image the smile on my face! Arlene tells the story of how she and and her friend Evelyn (aka eskae) organized a Postcrossing event in Okanagan Regional Library, as part of the local summer reading program:
My Postcrossing friend Evelyn Skae and I were talking one day about how nice it would be to spread the word about Postcrossing. We had seen schools and teachers doing Postcrossing, so we thought it would be a great idea to see if the local library would be interested in doing something. I went to the library and they were very happy to incorporate Postcrossing into the summer reading program…so Evelyn who works at a print shop made a huge poster, and brochures for the library:
She put a post into the forums asking Postcrossing fans to send postcards to the library. I donated 60 blank postcards to the library so children could answer the postcards. The library set up a wonderful display for one month to let people know about it.
At last, the day for our Postcrossing-summer reading program project came… we arrived half an hour before and waited for the kids to come. It was so wonderful for the children to be able to pick the postcards they wanted, then write the sender a card in return. We had one sender who sent 8 postcards to the library! The children were very enthusiastic and had a wonderful time, there was even a parent who wanted to write a card too. Overall, our project was very successful and so much fun.
I also took many of my favorite postcards to show the variety of postcards we receive and the wonderful stamps on them. It is so exciting to share our passion with others!
We have a few extra postcards that were not answered, so I will be going to another library to see if they would like to continue the project!
Well done Arlene and Evelyn, what an inspiring event! :)
What about you? Have you ever introduced a child to the wonders of mail? Do share!