Celebrate National Postage Stamp Day

Another American holiday that’s celebrated on July 1 is National Postage Stamp Day. It commemorates the issuance of the first U.S. postage stamp, the Two-Cent Blue, on July 1, 1847. The stamp was designed by James B. Longacre and featured a portrait of Benjamin Franklin.

The Two-Cent Blue is one of the most famous postage stamps, but it wasn’t the first. The first adhesive postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued in the United Kingdom on May 1, 1840. The Penny Black was designed by Rowland Hill, a British schoolmaster who is credited with inventing the postage stamp. Hill’s idea was to create a system where mailers would prepay postage, rather than having the recipient pay for it upon delivery. This system made mail more affordable and efficient, and it quickly caught on around the world.

In the early days, postage stamps were made of paper and were not perforated. This made them difficult to use, as they had to be cut by hand. In 1854, the first perforated stamps were issued in Switzerland. Perforation made it much easier to use stamps, and it quickly became the standard.

If you want to celebrate National Postage Stamp Day (whether you live in the United States or not) you can:

visit your local post office, looks at and buy some stamps
write a letter or card and mail it
design your own stamp with a blank stamp coloring page (like this one from Eduprints)
color in stamp coloring pages — Mr. Nussbaum has a collection of the 50 states stamp coloring pages, which are just so cute!
start a postage stamp collection or check out the collection of the US Postal Museum
learn some stamp facts — for example, did you know the most expensive postage stamp ever sold was a British Guiana 1c Magenta, which sold for $9.5 million in 2014?
do some pretend play post office play — little kids love putting “stamps” on envelopes and writing “letters”

[Photo via Kenmore Stamp]

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Free Black History Month Coloring Sheets and…

Shark Week generally happens in July, but any time is a good time to learn more about sharks.

First, start with some fun whale facts like these from Kids Craft Room. Here I learned about the dwarf lantern shark, which is the smallest shark and only grows to about 6-8 inches (about 15-20 cm) long. It also emits light. How cool is that?

Natural Beach Living has some great printable shark information guides, where kids can learn about different kinds of sharks, match the facts to the pictures, or print out doubles and do a shark memory game.

Living Life an Learning has some great shark activity pages including the parts of a shark, types of sharks, a crossword puzzle and more. Also check out their parts of a shark and word scramble download, and a life cycle worksheet.

Learn about how sharks float with this great activity from JDaniel4’s Mom.

Need more facts about sharks? This fact pact from The WOLFe PACK on Teacher Pay Teachers includes fact sheets, a printable flip book, informational text, vocabulary, comprehension questions and more.

Living Montessori Now has a great collection of shark themed activities with a Montessori inspired twist. You’ll find a shark roll and cover, shark phonics and lots more shark activities Deb has collected from all over the Internet.

Remember the “Sharknado” movie? A Few Shortcuts turned the combination of sharks and tornadoes into a fun science activity. You’ll need a bottle connector for this project but otherwise should have everything you need on hand. Use their template to make your sharks out of aluminum foil. So fun!

You can also do some shark themed coloring with these coloring pages from Encouraging Moms at Home. Or make a cool 3D shark with this template from korkotak. And there are tons of different shark crafts collected in this post from Kids Activities Blog.

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