Valentine's Day Mailboxes and Post Office

It has been some time since I had a moment to sit down and write a blog entry. As I work this morning at 4:00 am unable to get back to sleep, I thought it the perfect time to reflect on the weeks past. Sometimes it seems almost impossible to incorporate the projects that I did before the Common Core Standards, but we did manage to do a design challenge for Valentine's Day. I spruced it up, and it can be found at Valentine's Day Mailbox Challenge.

I started by giving the PPT presentation on what I expected from my students mailbox designs. We looked at different types of mailboxes and discussed characteristics. I threw in some very funny ones that took on the features of animals and superheros to inspire them to think big.

Then, we visited our STEM lab and got to work designing. They turned out excellent.

I placed them in my cubbies so that they were out of the way, but easy to access.

To take it even further, we mailed our valentines in a post office activity. Each students takes a role as a worker at the post office or a mailer of valentines. They run through their roles of stamping, sorting, mailing, and distributing mail until they are replaced. The process is very smooth and all students get to do all jobs. I am working on attaching this part of the project to my TpT Mailbox Challenge. The students really loved it. Everyday they would ask me, "Are we doing post office today?" I was very exciting to have them act so enthusiastic toward the game that turns out to match with our social studies unit on "Goods and Services". Students learned how things can be exchanged for money specifically buying stamps. They are learned the specialized work that people do in the area of mail and banking.

Students are lender money by the bank so that they can purchase their stamps to mail their letters.

Alphabetical sorter for mail

I made my very own mailbox using two boxes stacked onto of each other and covering them with blue paper. I took screen shots of the post office sign. 

Students buy stamps.

The mailman collected mail from the sorting bins.

One of my students putting letters in the mailboxes.

One of my student mailing letters.

Someone gets a loan for stamps for their valentine, and another student lends out money and uses a checkbook to keep track. 

On Valentine's Day, the students took their mailboxes to their desk and read all of their mail. There were some mistakes of mail not making it to the right mailbox, but for the most part, it was a great success.