The Postcard Project

Last summer, inspired another Peace Corps volunteer's  project  from Africa I read about,  I began the POSTCARD PROJECT for all my art students. I started by asking Facebook friends, family, and all the folks on my email list to send my art students at St. Luke's Primary a postcard reflecting something about where they lived, and promised we would create postcards to send back to who ever sent us a card. The response was tremendous! Soon the postcards starting arriving in my Peace Corps  mailbox---it was exciting to see each one (and, I must admit--I sure enjoyed getting all that mail!) and read what folks wrote to my students. So, a big SHOUT OUT to all of you who participated and sent us cards!!! The children enjoyed reading them, and in the process learned about various areas of the US.

Here is the completed map with postcards (so far)

The next step was to obtain a big map of the US---I finally resorted to asking a fellow PCV who traveled back to the US to bring me one. My original idea was to place the cards on each state but I soon saw that would not work as the cards would cover over the whole map. I wanted the children to be able to read the cards and handle them, so I made a pocket to hold each card and used red yarn to point where the card came from. This system worked great, so I kept adding to it as cards arrived.

My home state of Alaska is well represented, with cards from Anchorage, Juneau, Sitka, Port Alexander and Gustavus...

                                A student busy drawing a card to send to the US...

the East Coast has cards from Maine, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York

the West Coast is well represented, with cards from Washington, Oregon, California, Mexico, and then inland-- Arizona, Idaho and Montana

2 cards the St. Luke students painted to send .....

and a few West &  Midwest states : Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri,

a 3rd grader drew and colored this card...

We even received several cards from other countries, including : Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Canada, Greece and Sweden

The students were quite excited when they received hand painted cards from a Middle School Art class in Moraga, CA--over 20 handmade cards with messages on them from kids near their age! they were thrilled. Here are a couple of cards they made to sent back to the Middle School students....we sent some already, but have more to send...

All in all, this has been a fun and informative project for my students. They really enjoyed creating postcards in a variety of mediums. We are still making postcards to send to folks, so if you have not received one yet--just be patient please---you will get one eventually.

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