Flat Stanley

If you have a grade school child, you probably know all about Flat Stanley. Based on a book, the Flat Stanley project requires my daughter to take a personally made Flat Stanley around with her on her Christmas vacation and write about his travels. Here's where our Flat Stanley traveled over the last two weeks:

Day 1: Flat Stanley got in his PJs with Tuna and enjoyed a candy cane near the Christmas tree and we all watched some Christmas movies.

Day 2: We went shopping at Justice with Flat Stanley. He has impeccable taste in costume jewelry.

Tuna spent most of her vacation sick. Very sick. So we improvised. Flat Stanley cuddled in her snuggie on the couch.

And then he came to see the doctor with us. Our doctor was willing to pose with Flat Stanley. What a swell guy.

Tuna was so sick that she slept almost an entire day away. The night before she was very sick, throwing up and all. So she crawled into bed with us and slept. Until 2 p.m. the next day. I snuck F.S. into the bed with her for a photo op. Because we were running out of options. Our F.S. project isn't very exciting.

Tuna pretends to administer a dose of amoxicilin to Flat Stanley. She hates this stuff. Claims it tastes like rose petals. I think the pharmacy should have flavored it. It's pretty awful.

Big sister and Diego and Flat Stanley all crawled into bed with Tuna on this sick day. They watched videos on their new netbooks.

More indoor playtime. Poor kid didn't get much time to play outside over vacation. She was pretty much sick until it was almost over.

Thankfully, this Christmas, Charles and I gave gifts to occupy an indoor imagination: computers and video games! Here, F.S. learns to play the Wii.

FINALLY, Tuna gets to ride her new bike! She got this for Christmas and wasn't able to ride it until New Year's! I'm so glad she's feeling better.

A note on this project:

Teachers, please don't make us parents do Flat Stanley homework on our vacations. I mean, let's be real: this is a parent assignment. Parents have to take pictures. Parents have to print pictures. Parents have to do most of the work. It's a real drag to cart this paper doll around and pose him with our children in fake, static poses. It would be different if we could pose him alone, pretending to climb a mountain, or in a lion's mouth (ah, the tricks of photography) and then have our children write a fiction tale about his travels (just like the book!). It's a hassle to disrupt family time to take a phony photo of this paper doll. This is our second time doing this project. I really hope that we don't get stuck doing it next year, too.

Tuna writes her story.