Kids Put Stamp on School Post Office

Redefining the phrase, “You’ve got mail,” 16 students at a private Van Nuys elementary school on Friday opened a miniature postal system that they designed and built over three months.

The second- and third-graders sang folk songs, danced and presented a hand-illustrated guide to the new internal mail system for an audience of parents and siblings at the Foundations School Community.

After field trips to U.S. Postal Service offices in Santa Clarita and Reseda, students built a 4-foot-tall central station and individual mailboxes for classrooms and administrative offices in their woodworking class.

“It was fun, because I got to hammer and saw, and I like doing that stuff,” said Nikki Lang, 8.

The class drew stamps that will be sold for 5 cents each Tuesday, when daily mail delivery begins. Mail service will continue until the school year ends.

Teachers blended several academic subjects into social studies-based projects at the independent school that serves 40 students between kindergarten and fifth grade. In creating the postal system and grand-opening show, children incorporated mathematics, creative writing techniques and musical performance skills.

And all the lessons were hands-on, said Scott Miller, who teaches the class jointly with Lori Quinn. “They’ve learned so much,” Miller said.

Some students were skeptical the project could be finished, but classroom optimists persevered. “We spent so many weeks and months on it, so I didn’t want to quit,” said McKenna Kellyeiding, 9.

In the coming months, Miller said, the class will learn about electricity as they build a model city with its own power grid.