“The Jolly Postman”

For the Senior Kindergarten classes, I do a language arts theme around the book, “The Jolly Postman” by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. For those who have never read this charming book, it is a book made up of “envelopes”, “letters”, “advertisements”, and other “mail” which help to tell the story of a jolly postman who delivers letters to characters out of fairytales.

This book is a great introduction to the many different ways we can express ourselves through written and pictoral language. The children LOVE pulling out the “mail” from the envelope-pages and helping me “read” it. They are just at the age where they are beginning to understand that letters symbolically represent words, and that words can tell a story. When we are finished reading the book, we create our own tiny little books using the nifty kirigami fold below:

kirigami book

Before making our books, we brainstorm together some ideas for themes. Each child gets their own idea in their head first, and then begins to create after that. This helps them have a specific direction they want to work toward, for example, one child made a Star Wars book, one made a soccer book, one used invented spelling, one wanted to see the words written out to copy them exactly. Each is proud of their creation, and excited for their families to see the super-surprise mail that comes!

We decorate our envelopes, put an address label and stamp on, slide our tiny books in, and seal the envelopes shut. Children are VERY curious how this will go into the mailbox in Old Town, yet somehow arrive at their own house in a few days. We estimate how many days we think it will take. And then we walk en masse to the mailbox to send our treasure on its way!