Handwritten letters are one of my favorite things in the entire world. So, teaching my students to write letters is such fun - plus, it's a quick little unit so it's perfect to do right before Thanksgiving Break.

This year, I have a precious little boy in my class who often says things that just make my day! He is so sweet, earnest, adorable, and just plain funny! Before I get to the part of the story with him in it - I want to remember the "lightbulb moment" I had and some background that led up to this epiphany. 

Now, in the past at the end of this unit I've always asked the first graders who they want to mail a letter to. At first, I would just tell them to bring a stamped & addressed letter to school later that week so we could finish our project. Of course, I noticed a lot of the letters were written by parents and such. Which is totally fine! But I wanted the students to do it and I figured if I wanted them to learn it a certain way, I should be the one to teach them. Plus, it wouldn't always come back quickly because not every has stamps or envelope anymore, yada yada. 

So then, I started e-mailing their parents for the address (since it's typically a relative or friend). Then, I print each one out for them. Of course I had to take some time for this because I had to separate the return address from the mailing address and next thing you know, prepping this activity would take me 2 hours...and that's a problem...

So as they returned these papers and the first graders finished the letters they had been writing in class, I started to pull the students in small groups to address their envelopes. 

Okay - so finally it's one of my sweet first graders turns. He's sitting down, addressing his envelope. After about each line in the envelope he proceeds to put his pencil down and shake his hand out - because "oh man, it's just such hard work." Then, he finished addressing the envelope and I tell him "Good job! Now flip the envelope over, put your letter in it, lick the envelope & you're finished!" He just looks right at me and says "Oh, I've heard about this part." Of course I'm dying laughing in my head...you've heard about this? Like what, all the kids are meeting together to talk about it at recess? So I say "You've heard about this?" and he goes "yes, it's gross." So I respond "it's not that bad, just stuff it, lick it & you're good to go." He proceeds to stuff the envelope and then he puts it face down on the table (so the licking side is facing him) and fear factor style - puts his hands on each side of the envelope on the table and gives a big sigh. I say "It's okay, lick it." And he does. Then, I say "Well, how was it?!" He sweetly and very sarcastically responds: "MMMM, delicious." 

With all the new technology and advancements, there are so many things kids don't know about anymore or get to experience - like knowing what a VCR is (literally, one of my strongest readers paused for about 5 minutes when she came to this word because she had no clue what it was, let alone said), having chalkboards in schools, licking a stamp, etc. It's so fun to be able to provide them with a little bit of "old-school" experiences.