Greetings from Auburn Elementary School

Eighteen five and six-year-olds sit on the polka-dotted rug in Anna Young’s kindergarten class.

“Criss-cross apple sauce!” Young said, and everybody sits wiggling on their own dots.

“How many states are there?” she asked.

“50!” they yelled.

“And 50 stars and 13 stripes,” someone pointed out.

“That’s right!” Young said.

“And are we getting postcards just from the United States?” she asked.

“No!” they yell. “From around the woooorld!”

While Shelby, who was star helper that day, started The Quiet Game (in which 14 people talked), Young pulled out folder after folder stuffed with postcards.

When two Moms sent out a call on Facebook asking family and friends for postcard messages to the class, they were happily surprised by the enthusiastic response.

In six weeks, greetings have poured in. The tally so far is 661 from the US, 70 from abroad and three emails.

Photos of the Eiffel Tower, Arc d’ Triomphe, Toronto skylines, Mt. Fujis and snowy woodblock art and Ukrainian greetings full of sunflowers written in Cyrillic.

Eleven postcards have come from England—one of the Queen in a big purple hat, eight from Canada, two in black-and-white from Austria of alpine villages and cows and one of red and gold flamenco saying ‘Costumes Españoles’.

“It’s cool,” said a young student. ”We have a magnet one and we’re getting more and more from around the world.”

They came first from family, then friends, then friends of friends, then people who saw the request on Facebook and wanted to send their greetings.

Young read through all of them and many have a tie to the region, Virginia, or teaching.

“They often say, ‘I used to live in Virginia’ or ‘I’m a retired teacher’,” she said.

“Here’s a nice one: ‘We live in a small town in NC, so small I couldn’t find a postcard, so we picked this one up in the Bahamas.’ A lot of them tell about their weather and what their state looks like.”

To visualize where the postcards were coming from, the class began pinning pins into a map in the classroom, rapidly moving to the world map in the cafeteria for a larger view.

“We’re learning about the world,” Nathaniel said “and the Golden Gate state.”

Juxtaposing the low-tech of a handwritten postcard with the high-tech of a kindergarten classroom, Young chooses a card from the ‘A’ folder.

They look at one postcard every day. It’s a card from Alabama with a picture of three black bear cubs climbing on a log in a green forest. The American black bear is Alabama’s state animal.

“Bears!” everyone yells while the class’s interactive touch board projects the planet, then zooms in to a red-outlined ‘Alabama’, which is discussed and found to be rectangular or possibly a trapezoid and larger than Virginia.

“My buddy moved to Alabama!” someone said.

“Can we go to my house?” said someone else.

“No,” said Young. “Because right now we’re going to Alabama.”

“Five four three…”

“Al-a-bam-a!”

Scenes of Alabama included the bears, farms, the Gulf of Mexico, state flowers and geology. Many are crammed with writing.

“Hi students, this photo was taken at a beautiful spot on the bay,” one sender, who grew up in Salem, wrote, her husband is from Check.

Another person grew up in Roanoke.

“My Dad’s been to Roanoke,” said someone.

“The weather in Alabama is very hot!”

“I would love to be there right now…”

“Me too!”

Postcard projects are initiated by teachers and librarians to improve geography, literacy and art skills. Other postcard projects work to build community when students send cards adorned with pictures depicting their own neighborhoods according to Bright Hub Education, which supplies teacher lesson plans.

“Crisscross apple sauce!” Young said and they passed the postcards around the circle sitting on their bottoms on the polka-dotted rug.

In the small classroom, these young people are thinking about the larger world.