Stamp Sorting : Geography and History in a box!

School interruptions...Nobody likes them. For this reason, I decided to delay the beginning of our school year instead of starting and stopping, starting and stopping and so on. I know a lot of you have been patiently waiting for me to resume my regular-content posts (thank you for your patience by the way!:) ) but I felt we wouldn't be off to a great start if we had one school day only to stop and resume later in the month. As such, school will really only be starting after our visitors have left (September 23) and posts about that week should begin to be published the week after. Until then, I'm afraid my publications will probably be only occasional. Please bear with me and preview in the meantime another material I've prepared for Adrian's use during his school time: the continent sorting stamp box; a geography teaching tool. 

Stamp Sorting Box; a compartment for each continent except Antarctica
(can't find stamps yet!)

This activity idea came upon me after I realized I wanted to do more "continental" activity than just present a traditional Montessori continent box. As we will be spending one week per continent, simply having Adrian explore a box as he wished seemed a bit lacking. I felt there should be some activities and some trays presented instead of just one giant treasure box to rummage through. For now, I am not completely putting aside the idea of making continent boxes as objects coming from the continents themselves will always be interesting to explore but I also want Adrian to enjoy what would normally be found inside a continent box more thoroughly. For example, while it is very neat to find stamps from many countries in a Europe box, what's a child to do with them? I pictured Adrian possibly sifting through them, maybe stopping at one if featured a train on it or something of the sort. I can't picture him doing much more with the stamps at this point if they're simply in a box...yet if I take the time to find stamps/money to buy stamps, I want Adrian to see their potential. I definitely wouldn't want to chance him dismissing them completely. As such, I went ahead and created a continent stamp sorting box per an idea found on The Hands On Homeschooler. From there, the stamps will be sorted according to their continent for the rest of the school year. After their initial sorting (quite elementary for a Kindergartner of course) more activities will be created for the stamps pertaining to each continent! :) What kind? You must stay tuned to find out. (Adrian will be studying Europe in just a few weeks) but for now, let me show you the Continent Stamp Sorting Box:

I started by covering one of Adrian's old sturdy shoebox with a neutral paper. I won't lie: I'd rather have a wooden box but they seem to be hard to come by. If I find a suitable one with six compartments and a lid, I'll get it but for now, this shoe box will do. Once the box and its lid were lined, I glued a color coded Montessori continent map on the lid for reference (The Homeschool Den) and then I cut six squares of construction paper: a red, a yellow, a green, an orange, a brown and a pink. These are of course, the colors representing the continents according to the Montessori map I had just printed and glued to the lid of the shoebox. The bottom of the box could also simply have been painted but I thought I'd use the same paper as I was planning on using on our stamps. :) To finish up the box, I used thick cardboard from used packaging boxes and cut the lengths needed to separate the shoebox into six and simply slid them snuggly into the box. Of course it is not the prettiest Montessori material ever built. That's why I said if I find a wooden box I'll get it but for now, it should do the job. :)

Stamps mounted on their Montessori continent color: ready for sorting

Once the box is finished, you need to start gathering stamps from all around the world. That is when I truly felt very, VERY, sad indeed. You see, I used to collect stamps when I was a young girl. I bought bags of stamps and carefully peeled them off the envelopes by soaking them, and would sort them by countries or theme, to finally lovingly adhere them to philatelic albums. And now, well, I'm not sure where my collection is. I think I might simply have tossed it when I got a bit older. Pff. Oh well. Thankfully, a lot of people are still collecting...and selling theirs so I bought a lot of 100 stamps on Ebay. It guaranteed me stamps from 90 countries for quite cheap (we're talking less than USD$5 here). Overall, it was a good deal (a few damaged, a few from the same countries). I'll start with these stamps of course but will eventually get more because I know children like lively colors, bigger stamps, animals, flowers, and other things they can recognize (I know I did!). When the stamps arrived, I sorted them by continent myself and proceeded to look at what country issued them. I liked how The Hands On Homeschooler added an extra layer of color for countries that no longer existed so I decided to do the same. All stamps coming from a country that had changed name or boundaries, or something alike was first put on a black construction piece of paper and then on its continent color. For all others, I simply put the stamps of European countries on red construction paper, the stamps coming from South American countries on pink construction paper and so on. For now, I did not laminate any of  the stamps after mounting them on colored paper. Adrian is a very careful little man so I do not think they will need any covering at this point. (I am also hoping he may want to start his own stamp collection like I did after manipulating these stamps so laminating the stamps would horrify him in the future! :))

Stamps from former countries are easily identifiable with a black mat
and a history lesson on the back

When school starts, this box will be presented, along with a basket filled with the stamps for Adrian to sort by continent. Later in the year, we'll do activities with the stamps from the continent we are actually studying. As you've noticed, I have not made a compartment for Antarctica. At this point, I do not have any stamps from there and I am sure they are hard to come by (though they do exist apparently) but if I do get my hands on one, I'll add a white envelope on the inner lid of our box! :)

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Today, I'm happily linking up to

Montessori Monday, The Kids Co-Op, Show-and-Share Saturday, Link & Learn, TGIF, Share it Saturday, Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase, Sun Scholars's For the Kids Friday,  Tuesday Tots, Preschool Corner &5K, Serenity Saturday, We Made That, and Artsy Play Wednesday.

If you would like me to link up with you, please don't hesitate to ask, it might take me a week or two, but I generally do!