Goodness is welcome in our home

Goodness comes to visit!
This unique traveler came to us and we were delighted by the originality and cuteness factor.
What a treat to have our home filled with goodness.

Our Field Trip to Honey Hill Farm

We loved tasting the delicious honey and made two recipes right away.

These bees are busy filling these hexagonal cells with honey. They will then seal the honey in with wax.
These kids were demonsrating how bees move from flower to flower, picking up pollen from one flower and leaving some of it behind on another flower. This pollinates the flower so it can make seeds or fruit. 

Flat Stanley Learns to Lapbook

Charles learns to make a lapbook and he taught one of our flat visitors all about it.

Flat Traveler Lapbook

I created this lapbook for Flat Max, a cute rabbit, who visited us from Kamloops, Canada.
If you do an image Google search on Kamloops, you will see how beautiful it is.

Travelers at the Mill City Museum

Packing Shoeboxes

One event we do every Christmas is pack shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child, a ministry of Samaritan's Purse. This year we are privileged to have so many flat helpers.
Our family loves this ministry because we can personalize each box with boy stuff or girlie items, send a letter and photos if we want and add a variety of goodies. We try to remember to pray over each box and that the precious child receiving it would not only be blessed, but would come to know Christ as their savior.

New Flats Arrive!

We got two new visitors. Their first outing was our homeschool co-op Partnership where they participated in gym class.
We hope they enjoy their stay with us.

Frosty Fall Days!

These pictures show the changing weather and the changing colors in our autumn forecast. The flat visitors are coping well.
However, they will be heading home soon since none of them brought winter coats!
Because the clocks were set back last night it is now getting dark at 5:30 p.m., which I do not like!

About Flat Travelers

Are you curious about what flat traveling is all about?
It seems to have originated from a children's book titled Flat Stanley. Stanley had an unfortunate accident and was flattened, which turned into a positive thing when he wants to take a trip but can't afford it because his family decides to mail him.
What we did is we printed out some paper doll patterns and colored them. Each of my kids picked what kind of flat traveler they wanted to send. Some people send flat pets, animals, historic figures, or a paper doll of themselves. We also laminated our travelers to make them more durable. Once our travelers were ready we had to find host families for them.

My favorite source for that was a Yahoo group called, Flat Travelers Homeschool.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flat_travelers_homeschool/

From this group you will learn how to compose a journal, you will find families willing to host your traveler, you'll see pictures of other travelers, it really is a complete site.
After your travelers are mailed to the host family they will show your traveler the town! They will take the traveler to places the host family is visiting and also make him a part of their daily routine. The host family will also keep a journal of sorts documenting things about their own family, their town, area, and what they have been doing. Most travelers are gone 3-4 weeks, but we found the average length of time to be 6-8 weeks.
Our travelers have been to Texas, British Columbia, Alberta and Illinois. Traveling is not without its risks; we have one traveler missing and one has been gone for almost a year. It does happen, but I don't know how often.
One way to bypass that is to have Cyber Flat Travelers, which is one purpose of this blog.


Great Links about Flat Traveling
This site describes flat travelling, shares photos and has helpful links. http://www.angelfire.com/empire2/flattraveling/

The Official Flat Stanley Site
http://flatstanley.enoreo.on.ca/

A Fellow Flat Traveling Family
http://www.zorenaflattravelers.blogspot.com/

Another Family's Adventures with Flat Travelling
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/zanyzookeeper/

FLAT TRAVELER'S HOME SCHOOL SCRAPBOOK
http://flattravelschool.bravejournal.com/

Flat Traveling in Cape Cod

We received one of our travelers home from Cape Cod. Our flattie even got to attend a Boston Red Sox game. Considering NickaBob is a HUGE baseball fan, that was a treat! The Cape looks like a BEAUTIFUL place and very different from our neck of the woods.

Sherburne National Wildlife Festival at the Refuge

Althought the leaves are changing fast there is still a lot of green to be found.

Crazy Monkey and Flat Stanley enjoy the view of the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge.

Flat Ducky comes outside too and while they are looking around they spotted a Great Blue Heron in our pond.

Flat Billings Bear joins Charles outside for a look at the brilliant fall colors.

At the 20 yard line Flat Dude, Wamponoag Maiden and Flat RC cheer NickaBob on. AND they WIN the game!

Where Are Our Travelers?

We currently have several travelers visiting a variety of locations.
Flat Nicholas is in Alberta, Canada.
Flat Charles and Flat Nicka are in Plano, Texas.
Flat CAP is in West Virginia.
Flat Bob is heading to Massachusetts.
We sent Cyber Cyrus to Japan.
Flat Basketball Bobby arrived safely in Massachusetts.
We have travelers heading to New Zealand, one to Auckland and one to Christchurch.
We have two travelers visitng other parts of Minnesota. Hooray!

Our flat visitors conduct a science experiement with Cap. They are looking at pond life grown with various food sources.

Norlee loves to get acquainted with travelers!

Flat Dude gets a piano lesson. He already knows how to play guitar and was interested in trying something new.

Billings Bear, Flat Stanley, Crazy Monkey and Flat Dude were good students in CAP's Minnesota class.