By Liz Newlands
While everyone in town has heard of Perianne Jones, very few have probably heard of her friend Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley is the main character in a series of children’s novels, The Adventures of Flat Stanley, written by Jeff Brown. It is the humorous story of a young boy who becomes flattened one day when his bulletin board falls on him. His family realizes that there are a lot of advantages to being flat, the main advantage being that he can fit in an envelope and travel the world!
This year my grade 1-2-3 class at Pakenham Public School has been involved in a world wide Flat Stanley project. We have arranged exchanges with classrooms in Cambodia, South Korea, Dubai, the USA, just to name a few. We send the class our Flat Stanley, and they send us theirs! We share information about our class and community, and we map the places Flat Stanley visits on Google maps. As well, each student, and their family, has sent off their own Flat Stanley to a friend or relative, who in turn has sent Stanley on to another location. These Stanley’s have been to Sens games, on vacation in Mexico, and one boy’s Stanley has made it to Rome, and Egypt!
So, when we asked Perianne if she’d like to take Flat Stanley along to the Olympics, she was thrilled! We will be following Perianne’s journey, and reading her blog over the next few weeks, and Flat Stanley will be sending us photos and postcards.
Here are a few pictures of Flat Stanley at the training centre in Italy.
We will keep you posted on Flat Stanley’s journey to the Olympics and we will all be cheering for Perianne! Go Canada!