Virtual Flat Stanley Project

"FLAT STANLEY" by Jeff Brown.

This book is about a young boy named Stanley who is accidentally squished "as flat as a pancake" when a bulletin board falls on him. Stanley is very, very flat but otherwise fine. The book tells how Stanley discovers some real advantages to being flat. He can slide under doors, go down into sidewalk grates, and even fold himself up small enough to fit into an envelope and be mailed to California (from a city far away in the USA) for an exciting vacation.

 Written by Jeff Brown, Illustrated by Tomi Ungerer (originally) and published by Harper and Row in 1964, Flat Stanley (Amazon.com - Scholastic) inspired a whole series of Flat Stanley books as well as the 'Flat Stanley Project' (www.flatstanley.com) where Stanleys are mailed around the world and students write stories of his adventures.

We are going to email virtual FLAT STANLEYS, and we send them off to visit cities all over America and the World. The person who gets a FLAT STANLEY "decorates" him. FLAT STANLEY is "dressed" (using crayons, markers, paints, and sometimes fabric!) in clothes that he might wear to reflect the climate and / or activities FLAT STANLEY might see or do there. We also send out a questionnaire so that we can find out what FLAT STANLEY saw or did in that faraway city, what the climate is like, the distance between that city and ours, and some interesting facts about that city. Then that lucky person emails those facts back to us with the newly dressed FLAT STANLEY!

Flat Stanley icon for use with the Flat Stanley Project. Just a fun little thing that I was tinkering with...

It struck me that it might be fun to send Stanley around the world in Google Earth.

Stanley at Buckingham Palace with 3D model (click for full size)

So opening up Google Earth we can virtually travel all over. Paste the web address below into your placemark's custom icon location and you can have Flat Stanley show up on earth wherever your class sent him!

http://gelessons.com/graphics/flatstanleyicon.gif  The full lesson is a work in progress , but you can get started with your kids today Here is how to begin.

1. Just create a placemark where Stanley is visiting, click the yellow thumbtack to change the icon:

, click the 'Add Custom Icon button' and paste in the green URL above.

2. Then click OK, OK and there's Stanley!

I found another teacher on line with a similar idea and suggest an emai to him at: "david AT gelessons.com" (except with @ instead of the AT of course).