Postcrossing Blog

During their school’s “Alternative Learning Week”, the students from an Italian school embarked on a special project that took them on a journey through time, rediscovering the beauty of postcards and stamps. This initiative, led by their teacher Matteo Aldrovandi (aka mattyboy3y) aimed to introduce students to the magic of traditional correspondence, stamp collecting, and the joy of waiting for a postcard in an increasingly digital and fast-paced world. Here’s Matteo’s report of that special activity!

Hi everyone! I’m Matteo, a teacher at Scuola Secondaria di I grado ‘B. Croce’ in Gonzaga, working with three first-year classes (students aged 11 years old). Our “Alternative Learning Week” is all about breaking away from traditional teaching methods and exploring new, enriching experiences. Thanks to the Postcrossing forum, I connected with Ana (aka Anacalma), a Spanish teacher working with students with motor disabilities. When we realized that both of our classes had around 70 students, we saw the perfect opportunity for a “direct swap” between our schools. And just like that, with the help of Postcrossing, our adventure began!

The project unfolded in several exciting phases. First, my Italian students explored the fascinating history of postal communication through archival videos from Poste Italiane website, learning how stamps and letters have played a crucial role over the centuries. Then, they took part in a fun and engaging challenge: voting for the “Most Beautiful Stamp of 2024,” a competition that sparked their curiosity and appreciation for stamp design.

But the real highlight of the experience was the creation of personalized postcards. With enthusiasm and creativity, each student designed their own unique postcard, which they then carefully addressed and stamped—many of them for the very first time! These special postcards were sent across borders to their peers in a secondary school in Madrid, Spain, turning this into a truly international exchange.

None of this would have been possible without Postcrossing! Through this initiative, my students not only experienced the excitement of sending a tangible message but also discovered the anticipation and joy of receiving a postcard in return, perhaps even starting new international friendships or sparking a newfound interest in stamp collecting and postcard writing. Who knows? Maybe among these young participants, there are future postcrossers… or even the designers of a future Italian postage stamp!

A heartfelt thank you to the Postcrossing team, to Anacalma, and to everyone who helped make this project possible. This experience proved that even in the digital age, the charm of postcards and stamps remains as magical as ever!

Oooooof… World Postcard Day was such a rush! Everywhere we looked, people were posting and tweeting about their postal adventures, showing the pretty cards they were mailing, or giving the world a peak into their happy mailboxes. So many things happened that it took us a while to recover from all the excitement… but here we are now to tell you all about it!

First things first: remember the Stampex Talk we mentioned? It went brilliantly! We had a nice time chatting with Isobel Klempka from Stampex, postcrosser & philatelist Constanze, ABPS chairman Graham Winters, actor and postcrosser Sam West… as well as quite a few of you, who jumped in at the end to show your treasures! We oooh’d and aaah’d at all your stories and special postcards, and had a really good time. If you weren’t at the event, you can enjoy a recording of it below:

A lot more talks about stamps and collecting happened at Stampex between 1–3 October, and you can see an archive of those on the Auditorium of the event.

Meanwhile, lots of museums geared up to participate on World Postcard Day! Some showcased the postcards on their collections on social media, others helped spread the word, a few organized workshops or school actions. With the help of the Singapore Philatelic Museum, students in 40 primary schools throughout the country wrote messages of love and appreciation on postcards, to their friends, family and healthcare professionals. For many, this was the first time writing postcards!

Simultaneously in Croatia, Hrvatska Pošta helped 17,000 students in 500 primary schools throughout the country learn more about mail and postcards with the help of an educational video featuring their mascot, Marko Markica. The students were offered postcards, which they wrote during the class.

And still on the topic of schools, we lost count of the number of times the lesson plan was downloaded! Postcrosser Dovilė (aka VaDovi) challenged her former primary school teacher to participate in the event, which she promptly accepted. They used the lesson plan, postcards were printed, more classes joined and when the day came, 150 students at the Mažeikių Kalnėnų Progimnazija participated in the event, learning about mail, how and what to write on a postcard, where to stick the stamps, etc. Hurray!

Frank Roche (aka Postcardist) put together a special episode of his Postcardist podcast, where we hear about people’s plans for World Postcard Day all around the world. A few postcrossers chimed in to share their plans, and we especially enjoyed hearing about BonnieJeanne’s (aka postmuse) plans to make ravioli for dinner, because they’re often shaped like postage stamps — what a neat idea to celebrate a postal-themed day!

And last but not least, some of you have already started to receive your World Postcard Day badges on your profiles, as the postcards you sent on October 1st slowly arrive to their destinations. A grand total of 45453 postcards were sent on Postcrossing that day — one of the best days ever in the project!

By the time October 1st came to an end, we were overwhelmed with joy and gratitude for all the enthusiasm with which the Postcrossing community embraced the launch of the World Postcard Day. Thank you for spreading the word, sending postcards and helping put this day on the calendar! 💙 It was such a lovely highlight in this gloomy year.

We’re already buzzing with ideas for 2021… but we would love to hear your thoughts too! Got any cool suggestions or plans for next year’s World Postcard Day? Let us know in the comments!

It’s no secret that we have a huge soft spot for children writing and enjoying postcards. There’s something about their awe at the mysteries of mail, the delight at checking the mailbox, and the effort they put into each word that just never gets old. 😊

This year for the World Postcard Day, we thought it would be a good idea to do something for the little ones, and after some thinking, we hatched a plan try to help teachers give a class about postcards. Because we’re not teachers ourselves, we enlisted the help of Kristin (aka volvomom), who is an educator in the Boston area. She introduced us to the idea of Understanding by Design, a backwards education concept that focus on the results before considering which learning activities will best meet those goals.

The goals are simple: we want students to understand how mail works, and invite them to send a postcard on October 1st! So we’ve laid out a few ways of achieving this result, listing videos on mail topics as well as tasks that teachers and students can try. We’ve done our best to make the lesson plan flexible enough to accommodate different grades and also different subjects, in order to fit as many classrooms as possible.

We’ve also enlisted the help of some postcrossers to translate the lesson plan into different languages, and so in addition to the English version, there are now versions in French and Russian (by michelle_2012), Dutch (by avanesdonk), German (by frewen and killewips) and Spanish (by Loli-ts) — you can find them on the World Postcard Day page. Thank you ladies, you’re awesome! 👍

If you’re a teacher, feel free to grab the World Postcard Day lesson plan and use it in your classes on October 1st! And if you’re a parent of school children, we invite you to send it to your child’s teachers — it’ll be a great way for them to participate in the celebrations, and be a part of this global movement.

PS – 22 days and 12 hours until the World Postcard Day!

The PhillipsFamily lives in a small town Minnesota, USA, where they homeschool their daughter Maya and use Postcrossing to teach her about geography and cultures all over the world. Some months ago, we received a very nice email from them, letting us know that Maya had won 1st place on her county fair’s 4-H project by submitting a presentation about Postcrossing and her postcard collection! 🥇 We were so proud of Maya that we decided to interview her for the blog — here she is:

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

I found out about Postcrossing from a friend who thought I would like it because I really like geography. I was hooked right away! I LOVE getting postcards from all over the world and learning about different countries and people. I’m always excited to get the mail everyday to see which countries I can add to my collection. Recently I received my first postcard from Spain. I have postcards from all 7 continents!

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

My family really likes geocaching together. We have seen so many beautiful places hunting caches. I also really, really like to read and play board games. My favorite books are the Harry Potter series. I play Legos a lot (thanks Denmark!), and also scrapbook.

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

I keep my postcards in a nice box. They are sorted by continent and country. My mama really likes that I can have such a big collection without taking up much space.

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

One of my favorite postcards is from Gordon the Great. He is a cat from New Zealand who has to put up with Fat Dog and Skinny Dog. I’ve showed his postcard to lots of my friends because it’s so funny.

Have you inspired anyone else to join Postcrossing or start collections of their own?

I entered my postcard collection into the county fair as a 4-H project. I made a big display showcasing some of my favorite cards and wrote a description telling everyone about Postcrossing and how they can join.

I won first place in my age group and second place overall. I got a big ribbon for it! I was so excited because it was my first time entering anything into the fair. I hope a lot of people signed up after seeing it.

Have you been surprised by any place that you have received a postcard from or sent a postcard to?

I was surprised when I received a card from San Marino. I didn’t even know it was a country until then.

Is there anything that you are passionate about?

I am passionate about reading. I like reading new books and rereading old books. Besides Harry Potter, some of my favorites are Calvin & Hobbes, Anne of Green Gables, and A Series of Unfortunate Events. I’m currently reading through Mensa’s Excellence in Reading book list. It has a lot of classics my parents like.

We’re always in awe of teachers and their innovative ideas for class projects involving Postcrossing. Sometime ago, we told you about this game of bingo from a Taiwanese school, and now Charlene (aka clbrown) from the USA wrote in to let us know of a project she’s been doing with her class, connecting their lives to Mozart… via postcards!

I know it sounds a bit strange, but it works! Charlene is an elementary school teacher in Omaha Public Schools in Nebraska. This summer, their camp theme was “Making Connections” — and what better way to connect Mozart to students than through postcards? The assignment was to select postcards that represent the student, represent Mozart, and cards that have something in common for both the student and Mozart. Charlene gave them all an example, plenty of her own postcards, and let them do their research. Here are some photos of the result:

Did you know, for instance, that Mozart called his wife "little mouse’, or that he loved the colour red and had a few red suits? What about the fact that he was an animal lover and kept several pets?

The results are great and they show a lot of meticulous researching, as connecting an Austrian composer to a random postcard takes some creative thinking! Turns out, we’re all humans in the end, so connections are inevitable, once you go looking for them.

Well done children, and well done Charlene, for coming up with this imaginative activity!