Today we received our monthly letter from post from the past and it inspired a day of art history and learning about Picasso – yes on a Saturday 👨🎨.
If you are not aware of post from the past, once you have finished here head over to their website and / or Instagram page (I will link both at the bottom of the article) and have a browse.
We first discovered it just over a year ago when doing our Oceans unit study and I was searching for Jacques Cousteau resources.
I have since purchased letters sporadically, so when post from the past approached me and asked if we would consider a monthly collaboration for Instagram I literally jumped at the chance.
Post from the past is a subscription service where each month, you receive a letter (an actual physical letter not an email) from a different historical figure who has made an outstanding contribution to the world. This person could be a scientist, an author, an artist, or an inventor. If you would prefer not to subscribe you can purchase one off letters or set bundles too.
From June 2022 alongside the letter which is written in the first person and reads like a mini autobiography, you will also receive a newsletter which takes on a more factual approach.
This month our post from the past was about none other than Pablo Picasso.
After reading it everyone was inspired to learn more; not only about the man himself but also his art and cubism in particular. So subsequent to watching a couple of YouTube videos we headed to Twinkl to see what we could find. As always they didn’t disappoint.
The “Roll a Picasso” game was a massive hit and so much fun. You basically get a print out – or you can play it looking at the sheet online, with various Picasso style facial features and roll the dice to see which you should add to your portrait. We ended up with loads of really fun creations and I know it’s going to become our families must play game on all rainy days.
That’s what I really love about home educating, firstly the fact that this all took place on a Saturday morning. When my children were at school if I suggested doing a lesson of any kind on a Saturday they would have looked at me like I was completely mad. The other thing I love is that a simple letter can inspire an entire mornings / day even weeks learning. Education really doesn’t just happen between Monday and Friday 9-3pm. It can happen all day every day and at any moment. It can be inspired by something planned, or completely at random.
Post from the past is a great way to study something that you may not have thought of, something extra in your week to change things up a bit. Receiving a letter for children is a novelty in itself, I would definitely recommend getting it addressed to them. However the novelty of the physical letter is definitely not reason alone to subscribe or choose a letter you think would spark interest for your child / children. The letters themselves are packed with information, however written in an informal style they really do read like a friend has written to you. They are double sided and quick enough to fill your children’s heads with knowledge, but not bore them like many traditional textbooks can do. With the now added bonus of a newsletter, your child – and you, can learn a whole host of information about someone they know nothing about.
How you follow up the letters is of course completely up to you. I always like to do something hands on to really get a lesson to stick. Would they remember what cubism or who Picasso was from reading a letter just once – probably not, however the letter ignited their thirst for knowledge. So alongside YouTube videos of not only Picasso’s life, and looking up various paintings of his, doing the simple activities mentioned above will definitely help them to retain the information. They have also decided after it was mentioned in one of the videos we watched that they want to learn about pointillism artists next.
So there you have it – who knows how many art history lessons our post from the past will inspire, but today I am thankful for the creativity and learning that it brought into our home, and I can’t wait to see what’s in our next envelope!
