Name of Activity: .Post Office

Category:. Let's Pretend: Place

Props: Letters, stamps, post box, mailbag, stamper, and other props that establish the post office.

Your Role: travel guide and historian

Directions: Show your child all the props and pieces that help establish a post office. Ask your child if he/she remembers going to the post office or can imagine what a post office is like. The pieces can help establish post office experiences, i.e. the retrieval of memory images or stimulate the development of imagination images. Encourage your child to create an enactment using all the pieces.

Goals for You: Your task is to help your child create the world of the post office--to draw from previous experiences of post office and to imagine post offices that your child finds exciting and stimulating.

Goals for Children: We hope that your child can enter the imaginary world of the post office, transform the here-and-now reality of the room into the post office of his or her dreams, and to project him or herself into the "communication mode"--mailing letters to anyone with whom he or she would like to correspond.

Possible Strategy:

What to say "Here's some props and pieces that look like they are part of a real post office. Have you ever been to a post office? If not, can you imagine what it's like?"

What to do Show your child all of the various post office pieces.

Possible Shaping:

What to say "Is there somebody to whom you would like to write? Have you ever gotten a piece of mail? Whom should we send a letter to?"

What to do: Help your child create a world that is stimulating and exciting--if necessary manipulate the materials with your child or ask him or her about previous or possible post office experiences.

Possible Ending:

What to say: "I loved going to the post office. I wonder if you could go home and write a letter to somebody for real and then take it to the real post office?"

What to do: As usual, put away the materials carefully.

Material on this site created by Helane S. Rosenberg, Ph.D. and Yakov M. Epstein, Ph.D. in conjunction with their forthcoming book titled Play for Success. All material on this site is copyrighted and may not be reproduced or cited without written permission of Helane S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.. Dr. Rosenberg is Associate Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education of Rutgers-The State University, New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Epstein is Professor of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Science of Rutgers-The State University, New Brunswick, NJ. He is also Director of the Center for Mathematics, Science, and Computer Education of Rutgers University.

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