Over the past couple of weeks we've done a series of postal activites.
Made a post box from a recycled cardboard box, I did the cutting out of the slot and made a door in the back, we painted it together.
Used alphabet stencils to pick out the right letters then drawn them onto another card for 'collection days and times' and stuck in on the front.
This led to a flurry of letter writing (scribbling and using stickers), card writing, writing envelopes, putting stickers on for stamps and posting the letters...then collecting them and handing them out to people.
Then another day I cut another box up so it stood up on it's own and had a service hatch or widow to look through and called it the post office. We didn't even get to paint it yet because he was so excited to play post offices that we just dove right in. With the service hatch set up on his little table I provided a couple of tubs for in and out trays, pens, stickers, post it notes, a bunch of small pieces of coloured paper and various sized envelopes etc and we took it in turns to put on funny accents and role play customers coming to buy stamps etc. If I asked for 14 stamps he had to stick 14 stickers onto a piece of paper to give to me, then write out a receipt for the transaction. Then I remembered I had a date stamper and ink pad so that was added and he just loved stamping it over and over all officially
I'm going to save up any application forms or return forms from junk mail to add to it so he has boxes and forms to fill in too.
My heart melted when one morning we had just got up, he dashed to his table 'wrote' a letter with scribbles and stickers, i could see how precise he was trying to be in where they went even though the end result looked haphazard and just random, a lot of care went into it. Then the envelope, then folding the paper so it would fit in the envelope and eventually he presented it to me, 'letter for mummy'. I asked him what it said, 'I love you'
