PCPS students receive Valentines from around the globe

Students learned that love, kindness stretches far beyond Illinois

By STEPHANIE JAQUINS Shaw Local News Network

Putnam County Primary School second graders received an outpouring of letters, postcards and valentines from friends, family and strangers around the globe.

Second grade teachers Amy Bell, Ashley Bush and Taylor Kimble made a post to the school’s Facebook page asking the public to send their classes valentines or postcards. The post was shared to the teachers’ personal pages, by parents and many others. The response was massive.

“We’ve received hundreds of letters,” Kimble said. “It’s gone much further than we ever thought possible.”

Each day the classes would open the mail as a class and then show the students on a map where the card came from. They then would place the cards on the maps posted in the hallway with strings, connecting the cards to their origins.

At first, most of the cards were sent from students’ relatives, but as the cards continued to roll in, the teachers were surprised to find many of them were from strangers.

“Our purpose spread very quickly and we even received postcards from other countries, people we really don’t know, and also we received a few from individuals in the military,” Kimble said. “One of the cool ones we got was from Guam and it was a person who used to be from the Putnam County area.”

Bell added that many people didn’t send just one card, but rather one to each of the three classes.

“I think it’s really cool, too, people are so generous,” Bell said. “People will include stickers or really cool postcards to show the landmarks in their state or their country and all kinds of really neat things, so it’s always a surprise when we open the letter.”

Some senders even sent cards from their pets and included pictures, which the kids enjoyed. Others took the time to include interesting facts and landmarks about their city and gave tips to the students in case they ever traveled there.

“One of the biggest impacts I’ve seen is that [the students] were amazed that kindness can come from somebody who has no idea who they are,” Kimble said. “It has inspired them to pass on that kindness to others as well.”

Many of the letters they received were from Florida, Bell said, which also served as a lesson in different climates. They explained to the students that some Illinois residents live in the Sunshine State part of the year to escape the cold winter months.

“Learning about where we live on the map in relation to other people has been important to them,” Bell said.

Bell said she knew of another teacher who implemented this project and thought it would be worthwhile to do with her students.

“[The teacher] had really good success with her first graders,” Bell said. “I know it aligned really well with our curriculum, because we study holidays around the world during Christmastime and we learn about all different countries and their traditions. We also do a mapping unit, so it’s fun to talk about the different directions and where these places fall on the map and how you could get there.”

The teachers were appreciative of the Putnam County community and beyond for supporting their project and helping the students reach so many people.

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