Two weeks ago we received a letter in the mail from our granddaughter’s first grade teacher. The class was reading a book, Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown. In the story Stanley is flattened, but not hurt, when a bulletin board falls on him. His parents take advantage of his flattened condition and send him in an envelope to visit relatives in California. Inspired by this idea each child in the class made a flattened version of themselves and mailed it off to their relatives. We had the wonderful opportunity of exploring Vermont with Flat Alma!
April in Vermont is not the best time to visit, the weather is unpredictable, you may get rain or you may get snow. Regardless of the weather we had fun exploring Vermont with our “Alma Doll”.
The first day I drove into Woodstock, Vermont, which is the neighboring town. We drove over the covered bridge that was closest to our house. I’m pretty sure they don’t have covered bridges where Alma lives!
We ended up at Billings Farm. I was really hoping the young cows would be outside but the only animal we saw was a white horse.
Luckily our neighbors have a farm with alpaca’s and sheep and horses. Flat Alma was able to stop and visit those animals!
At the end of the visit my husband had a chance to visit good friends in the Northeast Kingdom. They have a large maple sugaring operation there.
It was a drive but all in the fun of exploring Vermont! Flat Alma was able to view the whole process of making maple syrup, from the sap coming out of the trees to boiling it down to pure maple syrup.
On the drive home they drove by the state capital building in Montpelier, Vermont.
They even drove by the Ben & Jerry’s factory, but no time to stop for ice cream.
I thought this was quite an inventive idea for the teacher. They will be studying their maps to see where each flattened first grader went. It was a fun week for us exploring Vermont with our Alma Doll! We sent back numerous pictures of all the places Flat Alma visited as well as several postcards.
It was a short visit but we thought we did a pretty good job of exploring Vermont with Flat Alma.
Nancy on the Home Front 