Each year, the Ethical Culture Kindergarteners build and operate a functional post office — named Candy Mail this year — that serves the entire building.
Guided by their teachers, the students created and designed stamps, tee shirts, mailbags, signage, mail desks, a sorting station, and even mailboxes that were distributed to each classroom and office throughout the School.
Students are assigned different tasks — from working the stamp desk and collecting letters from the mailbox to canceling stamps, sorting postcards, and delivering mail at the end of each day — and spend two weeks experiencing the life of a postal worker! The post office allows teachers to incorporate important lessons in numeracy, coin identification, the function and importance of mail, and the responsibility of holding a job. It also helps students improve their handwriting as they fill out the postcards!
Once Candy Mail officially opened for business, students, parents/guardians, teachers, and staff members visited Kindergarten classrooms between 8:30–9:00am each morning to purchase stamps for 1¢ and postcards for 5¢ each. All the funds collected to purchase Candy Mail supplies will be donated to Ethical Culture’s buddy school, Lerata Primary School, in Samburu East, Kenya.
This year, one Kindergartener, Sylvie F. ’35, wanted to send a special message to Principal Rob Cousins, so we followed her letter as it made its way through the Candy Mail system. Enjoy the video below of the Kindergarten postal officers hard at work!
