Literacy Spot #22: Playing Postman

ByChristie Burnett

This week I wanted to share a super simple way of making letterboxes for postman play. For each letterbox you need one and a half paper plates. Decorate them as you wish and then staple together. You can punch a hole and add string for hanging or use loops of masking tape as we have.

Making pretend letterboxes is a wonderful way to encourage children to play with writing and reading as they ‘write’ letters for friends or family members and ‘read’ those delivered too them. By labelling each letterbox with the name of the recipient, you also playfully encourage name and letter recognition.

Since we made a series of letterboxes for Immy and her toys there have been all sorts of invitations delivered – for birthday parties, pool parties and playdates, I think the toys enjoy receiving mail almost as much as Immy does 🙂

For young children learning about literacy does not have to be complicated, in fact the simpler the better! So why not add a letterbox or two to your play today.

What is Childhood 101′s Literacy Spot? It is a weekly reminder of the importance of young children learning playfully as each week I share one idea for playing around with literacy, taken from my many years working as an early childhood teacher. Visit the previous Literacy Spot posts for more fun ideas for playing with literacy.

Christie Burnett is a teacher, author and mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to find engaging, high quality learning ideas.

2 Comments

  1. Love it

  2. Jane Agius says:

    That’s great!

    When I had an unsettled baby ( and my son was 2 and 1/2) I wrote a short letter with a little pic of my son and printed it out loads of times and we used to walk the streets with her in a sling with him posting along the way. He would get excited trying to work out how each letter box worked (so many different types) and for some places just FINDING the letter boxes. We had our address on the letter and we got so many lovely letters back, and drawings from kids and one lady sewed my son a tiny over-the-shoulder postmans bag with a felt ‘stamp’ sewn on and his name. We took a photo of him and the bag and it became a printout for the next letter. It was lots of fun and I met lots of my neighbours!!!

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