Hello and welcome to Our Time With Flat Stanley. This summer Flat Stanley, Alex and our family are sharing our Adventures and hope to inspire others.
Flat Stanley is a wonderful chapter book series for children that is more then 50 years old! Alex read a few of these books this year in his second grade class and to keep up with his creative and wonderful learning style I decided to make our own summer adventure program. If you would like to do this program as well you can find out more about Flat Stanley and his amazing world by clicking here. This is a fun program to do and a fun series to read with your children you can find this wonderful book series at your local library and
free printables by clicking here.
I had my mother in law print out the free Flat Stanley from Flat Stanley's website. I then colored it and then used peel and stick protector shelf adhesive vinyl from the dollar store to protect Stanley from wear and tear.
In the above photo Alex shows how Flat Stanley Arrive at our house.
Stanley quickly has become a very useful friend and will not only hold your place in your chapter book when you are not reading but also a great friend who will listen to you read out loud.
Alex said Flat Stanley was hungry and that we should make him some lunch so we had a great time cutting out Flat Foods Stanley would like. I covered them in that same vinyl and we cut them out.
Alex really enjoyed this project and the best part is that it cost next to nothing as we used our local food flyers and I already had invested the $1.25 in the vinyl!
A fun imaginative play set for table time and our car for our up coming summer trip to Colorado and South Dakota quickly emerged.
I wanted to make Flat Stanley some more fun flat items and found these on
www.makingfriends.com while the fun free printable flats here don't fit the same clothing as Stanley, the accessories do work well like the sports balls, flash lights, back pack teddy bear and more.
We actually made two Flat Stanley's As Alex wanted a Flat Stanley with a shirt like his for School as they had a field trip and he wanted Stanley to join in. Before the field trip Alex told me Flat Stanley also needed a sleeping bag. So I used Dollar Store Fun Foam, My trusty glue gun and some ribbon to make each of them a sleeping bag. This was a great idea as now I don't have to go searching for Stanley when we are reading!
Using two pieces of the same color fun foam, I trimmed one piece so that it would come to just below Stanley's arm pits. I then glued some ribbon at the bottom so that I could roll up the sleeping bag but in hind sight it is fine with out it. I ran a line of glue down both sides and the bottom of the fun foam and pressed the foam together. Once it was cooled down I slid Stanley into his new Sleeping bag to the delight of my 7 year old.
This was likely my most favorite craft so far for Stanley. Easy and fun and lots of play potential.
Not just for Crafts we also have been doing some wonderful reading. I have borrowed and bought as many Flat Stanley Books as I could find second hand but I have also ordered a bunch of books from
The Book Depository We live in Canada and
The Book Depository ships FREE any order world wide a huge savings and the books have been less expensive on line with them then in store.
We started with the First Flat Stanley Book which Alex read and loved I then purchased two units of study from
Teachers Pay Teachers based on this book and
Flat Stanley's World Wide Adventures 1 Mount Rushmore Calamity
These units covered everything I wanted to continue with Alex over the summer, math, literacy, social studies, geography and so much more. I paid under $10 for both units, printed them out and put them in a binder and we are working our way through these units this summer.
To Check out Teachers Pay Teachers please click here.
I love a multi sensory approach to teaching and Alex is thriving on this approach. We also have signed up for our Summer Reading Program at our local library, at the end Alex and Stanley will receive a medal!
With not a ton of planing we are incorporating Stanley into all of our activities, Learning with Stanley has been easy and fun so far!
We have done some really fun things with Stanley this week and I hope to share more of our adventures with Stanley with all of you as the summer progresses. Please share this blog and let your friends know about this fun and mostly free summer learning program your kids will love.
Flat Stanley has been the perfect house guest thus far. Why not welcome him into your home this summer as well?
As with all of my posts I would love to hear from you so please leave us a comment here or email us at karenmowen@gmail.com
