A Trip to the Post Office

The girls all tucked in after playing the mail game

As children, my mom used to play a bedtime game with my siblings and me that she called the Mail Game.  She would tuck our blankets in super tight.  Then she'd pretend to lick us shut like an envelope.  Next she would address us and finally she would pretend to lick her hand and then slap a stamp on our foreheads and mail us away somewhere fun.  I played this game for the first time with my own kids last week.  They thought it was great and beg for me to play it again every night.

Today we went to see how our mail gets to our house the real way.  Joy's class took a field trip today to our local postal sorting facility.  I went as a chaperone and took the big kids along since I knew they'd enjoy it as well.

Our tour started with each child sitting in the driver's seat of a mail truck, beeping the horn and then climbing out the back.  As I helped each child down from the back, I asked them what sort of mail they were.  Some kids were letters to their grandmas, one girl was a party invitation, Joy was a box of strawberries, Lizzy was a new toy (I think she confused the USPS with UPS), and David was a box of candy.

Next we went to the store front and each child stepped up to the counter and bought a postage stamp to place on their letters that they'd written in class.  Once all the stamps were bought and affixed, we walked to the mail box and each child put their letter inside.  They all looked very excited to be mailing something important.

Now the fun came.  We went into the back and watched a sorting machine in action.  I have to say that my big kids were a lot more impressed with the speed of the sorting machine than Joy's class.  David got as close as he could to examine the machine, asked a lot of questions, and did his best to figure the machine out.  Lizzy took a detour away from the class to see the entire length of the slots that the sorted mail went into.

Our next stop was the weighing station where all the kids got on a giant scale--549 pounds all together!  Then each child stepped on the scale by themselves.  The parents emphatically refused to step on the scale despite the many little protests.  Grown ups just aren't that interested in broadcasting their weight to the world.

The final stop was the most fun for the kids.  We got to go into the back of an empty semi truck.  Once we were all in, our tour guide told us to all jump as hard as we could and get the semi shaking.  This was the highlight of the trip for all three of my kids.  They really got that truck rocking.

And now in a few days, Joy will get the mail and find her own letter tucked inside.  I noticed the letter was addressed just to me, so I can't wait to get it.  I wish I could include a few pictures but they have a "no pictures" policy at the post office for security reasons.