Rhyming Prompt: December 17
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night
*Nor pandemic sickness nor other blight*
Stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
Their work this year has known no bounds.
They’ve brought us packages big and small,
And I for one have loved them all.
Let’s say thank you to the delivery crew
Who have brought the stuff that’s seen us through.
Download the prompts for December 17-20 here as a PDF or here as a Microsoft Word Document.
An image of the prompt for the day. It is printed on cream cardstock with a green border and a gold wax imprint of a frog. It is nestled in a lit Christmas tree.
Other Materials:
Whatever you’d like to thank your postal worker/delivery person. For us, this will be a card and a clearly labeled basket of packaged snacks we will put out for all of our delivery people (granola bars, and a few other snack packages and some canned seltzers). USPS employees are allowed to accept gifts worth less than $20, but not cash or anything that can be converted into cash, like a check or gift card.
Suggested Pose:
Frantz the Frog is dangling from a bannister, surrounded by holiday cards that are pinned onto a festive ribbon garland. The daily prompt is balanced on his shoulder.
Frantz is hanging out with our bannister of holiday cards. They’re such a nice reminder of all the joy our letter carrier has brought us this year!
Activity:
Work with your kids to find a way to thank your delivery crew. This can either be with snacks, with cards or drawings, or just with waving. Anything to let them know you appreciate them.
Rationale:
An image of a Tweet from @123SaySpieeeze that reads “There’s really only 2 types of days in quarantine: days packages come and days packages don’t come. I found this meme through the great Laurie Rogers.
This one is just about noticing hard, often thankless work. I imagine this year has been really hard for delivery people. If you are part of the USPS, you likely spent much of the year worrying about your job security, even while working extra long hours during a pandemic.
Book Recommendation:
We’ve talked about other gratitude books here before, but today I want to recommend The Thank You Book by Mary Lyn Ray and Stephanie Graegin. You can watch a read aloud here. I also love the Ezra Jack Keats A Letter to Amy about just how special the mail is (and how challenging it can be to deliver it). You can watch a read aloud here.
An image of the cover of The Thank You Book by Mary Lyn Ray and Stephanie Graegin.