Flat Stanley

A friend of mine from Utah is a first grade teacher and needed people to volunteer to have a Flat Stanley sent to different parts of the country so that her class could learn about different areas.  I volunteered to take one of her students' Flat Stanleys since I thought it would be a fun opportunity to teach my own kids about our area and how special North Carolina is.

Did you know that Krispy Kreme started in North Carolina?  My kids didn't.  

Flat Stanley loved his donut.

Look at all of that deliciousness.

Our family lives in a smaller town called Holly Springs which is just outside of the capital of Raleigh.  Within five minutes from our house, there are two old homes that served as hospitals during the civil war.  

This is Mim's House.  It is in the heart of downtown Holly Springs.

This is the Needham Norris House.  It is about two minutes down the street from our neighborhood.  Some developers recently wanted to knock it down to build a neighborhood but we have enough history-obsessed people in our area that we were able to save it.

We learned about Blackbeard and his history on the coast of North Carolina.  He used to scare his enemies by lighting fuses in his hair and beard to give himself a supernatural persona.  Despite Blackbeard's reputation as being a scary pirate, there is actually no proof that he ever killed anyone, just that he plundered a lot.

We also learned about how the Wright brothers flew the first plane in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.  We read a book about them and it was inspiring to learn about their persistence despite their many failed attempts at flight.  They had a lot of crash landings.

And so did our poor little Flat Stanley.

We also sent Flat Stanley back with a variety of leaves and seeds for the class to look at that they might not see in Utah.  It was fun for us to work on this as a family and it was nice to take a break from the typical school day.