I saw the Paddington’s postcards from UNICEF advertised on social media a few months ago. I thought it would be a great stimulus for geography and cultural studies, as well as learning about the lives of children around the world and supporting UNICEF. I thought I would share how we’ve been using it as part of our home education.

We have had 5 ‘postcards’ so far from countries around the world, where UNICEF support various projects. Each pack has a postcard from Paddington, four fact cards, a set of stickers, a blank postcard to fill in and a sheet with information about children and UNICEFs work in the country. There is a suggestion of an activity related to the country each month.

The first postcard was from London and also included a map and travel journal to complete each month. We have stuck our map into the cover of our project book and fill in a description of what activity we’ve done each month in the travel journal.

We generally start by reading the postcard from Paddington to find out which country we are finding out about this month. I usually pull the atlas out and we find the country in there, discussing which continent it is in. Some months I’ve printed a map or colouring page related to the country to do whilst I read out the fact cards and the information sheet. We then complete the suggested activity, they have been fairly open ended with no specific craft but enough usually to get us thinking of something we can do.

I read about the country before I get everything out with the children, so I can have some ideas for additional activities or facts that I think they will find interesting.

We have enjoyed our postcards and found them a good starting point for further discussion and learning. They aren’t a complete ready to go resource with equipment or consumables, like some subscription services, but they aren’t designed to be as such. They can be adapted as either a short activity for an hour or so, or as a start of a larger project on each country.