 Hi everyone. Welcome to our latest episode of STEM Chat. April is National Letter Writing Month so this episode we're talking about sending STEM in the mail. You might remember a few months ago we did do a segment on STEM in the mail featuring Diana's huge dinosaur paper that she folded up and they sent to a friend. And this month we're elaborating and coming up with more fun ideas for you to send happy mail and send STEM in the mail. That's right. So we're going to start out by talking about insects and bugs. So my younger daughter is super into bugs right now and I thought it would be fun to send some butterfly letters. So we printed out some butterfly pictures we found online. They were you know I just kind of did like a google search and I found a lot of I'm sorry I found a lot of butterfly images also on websites that sell butterflies. This is really cool because I think it's such a fun idea instead of just using writing a letter it sounds you know kind of boring maybe but this makes it more fun because you pick some really colorful butterflies. So while you're doing this you know your child is also learning you know different kinds of butterflies and all about them while she's you know writing notes to her friends. Yeah that's true and oh hold on let me get to the next picture. Yes here she is writing and the butterfly shape is kind of fun too because you can fold it and it looks like a butterfly. Oh it's adorable yeah that's really cool did they have fun doing this? Yeah she did she wrote so many letters and then she also had a lot of fun cutting them out it's like the cutting is not perfect but that's still okay. Yeah she had a lot of fun doing it and the butterflies are kind of pretty too so they're just kind of like all over our house now so that's kind of fun. So here are some ideas of different things you can send in the mail to a friend that's STEM related in addition to the paper butterflies if you can see like all the leaves and you know artwork and photographs and there's so much more you can send an even little piece of Micah as Diana has sent around we're waiting for ours. Oh okay we'll send one this one was actually meant for you and we didn't get a chance to mail it. Oh cool I can't wait to get it. Yeah you'll have to let us know how well it survives the journey. Okay definitely. Yeah so here it is the Micah we like to find rocks as everyone probably knows now and go rock pounding but the Micah is kind of neat because it's flexible so you can peel off a piece and then see it's like flexi so you can kind you can send it in the mail and it'll still meet the first class letter requirements. But there's also other fun gentleman mineral stamps that you can use as well I like those diamond ones. So this was done by my daughter and she sent it to your girls she took some flower a photo of some flowers in our firehouse and she used pressed flower stickers so this was done back in February and things were just starting to bloom before spring and we found these really cute realistic looking stickers that look like pressed flowers from jet pens. Yeah right daughters love the card that you guys said. It's so fun so in addition to that you know the pressed flower stickers now that they're blooming we went and grabbed a few of the flowers just a little bit and I think it's easy to start with small ones because they will dry faster so here are the they're from two different plants that we have around our home. So these are two of the main plants around our home baby sage has really beautiful vibrant pink white and this very deep reddish pink color to them that I thought would be cute and the creeping land landana which is purple and it's just so cute with little tiny flowers so I think I did this a couple days ago I'll show you what I've so I took the flowers and I put it in wax paper and so because flowers have sort of a liquid to them these dry faster so these little creeping landana dried really well. Oh they're so pretty yeah so you can just include these little you can tape them in a card or put them in wax paper and we just I just put them between really heavy books for a couple days and there's a larger one I think it's still stuck to the wax paper it's not completely dry yet so that'll be dry so actually the smaller the better I think if you want to do the whole like really sophisticated larger press flower look I think those flowers take a long time you have to keep like changing the paper to blot it. I use wax paper so the the liquid wouldn't leak through into my books so I think they're pretty in the wax paper too I feel like you can almost put them in the wax paper also yeah it'd be really nice. Let's see so we also this fall we had pressed a bunch of leaves oh so pretty. You can also send them I think my daughter wrote I love you on it. Oh that's cute but it's kind of neat to be able to. Oh yeah yeah I think they were more colorful and then they became brown as time passed but it's kind of neat to be able to find stuff in nature that you can send. Yeah so it's sort of like I think for whoever's going to receive it it's like a little touch of nature I think everybody feels happy with a little bit of nature around them and you can also write the name of the flowers that you've pressed so they can learn more about it look up some facts. Oh that's a great idea yeah so these are the stickers that are pressed flowers if you can't press any flowers around you. I got these on jet pens they're from a Korean brand and then this is um China Pink flower and this is lavender so there's different kinds I think there's more and then even you know if you want to send a postcard this was um what you sent to us Phyllis Ma's whatever mushroom artwork. Yeah we have some of her other postcards here it's neat because I really like how she depicts the mushrooms and it might be more difficult to send a mushroom in the mail but you can still. Yes yes I think there's tons of like postcards of butterflies and yeah magical things and it's it's just um something fun to send along. Yeah yeah we also um there's an artist I like named Christopher Marley and he has some neat bug cards. That's gorgeous. My older daughter wanted to send a secret code letter to her friend um so I had her write the alphabet out and then she wrote um a different number under each letter and then she wrote her message which you can see below um and underneath each letter she translated it and wrote the number so um you can see in the picture now on the left hand side she is copying all of the numbers down that make the secret code message that she's going to send to her friend. That's cool. I love that like between friends they have their own well now they have their almost secret code language. Yes yeah that like actually says something like you want to send secret code letters if you want to write back to me in our secret code. Oh that's cute. Oh I love that and then there's the code key that's great. Yeah so this is just what we're going to mail to the friend just the letter and then the code keys so she'll be able to hopefully figure it out and maybe write back. Oh that's fun. Yeah so my younger daughter is also friends with the younger sister of this little girl and she wanted to send a secret code letter as well but um you know they're not quite reading yet because they're toddlers so she drew a picture on a card instead and she's also very into dinosaurs so it's kind of a dino letter. Cute. And then she cut the card apart and she made a puzzle out of it so we've sent all the little pieces together and hopefully her friend will be able to put it together and have her own secret message. Oh that's fun that's a great idea for younger kids. Yeah I have um hopefully it'll be some fun for them. They let my daughter just like to do puzzles a lot so I think this is nice. Okay and then we also have been sending some sort of large format letters and we sent one to you Natalie. Yes should I show you? Yeah do you want to show us? Yes yes we got this in the mail which was really fun to open up. Let me just get it because large format is large. This is from the artwork in the pie episode and with the circles. Yeah we got super into making circles so then we're like let's just make big circle letters to send. Yeah so it's fun and it's all folded really well but uh yeah it's fun to get. My daughter is like oh wow she's looking at all the little drawings that your your daughter's did. It's really cute. Yeah I usually I like to put the big paper onto a table I just kind of like tape it down and then they'll just like walk by and draw on it and decorate it once in a while. Oh that's a good idea but you can fold it really well because. Yeah I was like trying to make it nice and flat so it can get made. Yeah so now this is really good flat shape but it's so big and bold so that was really fun. Thanks oh yeah so speaking of if you guys the viewers would like to send something in the mail that's large or you know maybe that you find in nature there's some guidelines that you'll have to follow but a first class letter can be mailed with a 55 cent stamp although I did put an extra stamp on yours Natalie because I just wanted to make sure it would get there and I was afraid it might weigh a little bit too much. If you'd like to send a first class letter which costs 55 cents to send you will want to follow these sort of rules it needs to be a maximum of 3.5 ounces it also needs to be machinable so it needs to be a rectangle instead of a square and it needs to be flexible so it can go through the machine. It can be a maximum of six and an eighth inch by 11 and a half inches and a minimum of three and a half inches by five inches. Yeah and when in doubt just stick an extra stamp on it right as you always say remember. You may need to stick as long as it fits in the dimensions you may need to stick like more extra stamps if it's extra big or weighs a lot. My hard thing about people sending like little boxes of movie candy in the mail too I don't know what costs to send there's all there's like a whole thing of like different fun things you can send in the mail like a brick or a hula hoop. Well I remember when the movie came out with Matt Damon the Martian people sent you could send potatoes. Really? Oh wow. Yes I guess there's lots of fun things more than 55 cents but still fun. Exactly. In addition to being able to send different shapes and sizes of envelopes you can also use different types of stamps you can use vintage stamps as long as they add up to 55 cents and here's a look at some of the ones we really like. There's all sorts of stamps these are vintage stamps so we combine them together to equal 55 cents and it's kind of a fun way to play with math too because my older daughter has fun putting together the different combinations to equal 55 and my younger daughter is learning about what the different numbers are. Do they also like does she pick certain stamps for certain friends that she wants to have on there too? Yeah she does she thinks she kind of knows what her friends are interested in so she usually tries to pick ones that her friends would be interested in. Very cool. Yeah and so you know that they have stamps about all different types of people so there is doctors and explorers and scientists. I actually didn't know who this was until I saw the stamp but this is Dr Elizabeth Blackwell and she was the first female physician. That's very cool it's very detailed for such a small stamp. Yeah it's pretty good because you can tell you can see like the font is kind of an old style font and then this one was interesting it's the photography stamp and it's also it's pretty old but it was neat because it shows what the old camera looked like and a roll of film which kids don't really see these days either. I recognize the space one you think you sent us that too the vintage space one right there in the middle. Oh this one? Yes. There you go. They have all different sorts of images on the stamps too which is neat there's all sorts of nature stamps and ocean stamps and flower stamps there's these carnivorous plant stamps over here and there's dinosaur stamps there's a lot of fun shapes. I really like these mineral stamps over here because they actually are diamond shaped when you put them on and there's the triangle stamp here and this stamp is interesting it's the Indian head penny and it's actually the smallest stamp that they ever printed. That's very cute. And this over here is a souvenir sheet that you can kind of stick on top of your letter like a giant stamp and we really like this stamp over here it's a hologram but it's actually it's not it I guess it's not technically a stamp it's a envelope right so if you want to send it you would need to put 30 cents of stamps beside it and then you can send it in the mail we sent one to you. Yes we clipped it out and saved it too. And there's also these stamp sheets that we love so my younger daughter loves insects and spiders and this one's neat because it has facts about each of the bugs on the back that you can read. That's really cool. Natalie do you remember this one I remember this one from when I was little I think. I think so too I don't I didn't have this one but I did remember them having I I think I do have some sheets with actual information on the back too. Yeah because there was like a frog there's a amphibians and lizards one that they also had there was like a phase of things from nature with the fact so I guess you can go and find it now in ebay. Yeah that's true. Let's see we also like there's some really great stamps that have these beautiful scenes we like the dinosaurs one. Oh yes that's really beautiful. But they also have a series of different ecosystems and they have all different like the animals that live in that ecosystem. So that's me there's like I don't know how many different ecosystems there are maybe 12 different ecosystems it's like tundra and rainforest. And these are kind of neat space stamps. They're images from the Hubble telescope. Oh that's really cool can you bring it up closer to see. Sure. Is this something that you got on ebay or you had this from your collection what year was this? Let's see so I bought these at a stamp show there's a lot of stamp shows and you can just buy the stamps at face value. I don't know people a lot of people used to collect them and then there are like so many collections now that there's just tons of stamps up like vintage stamps out that you can actually use. But I haven't been to a stamp show in a while but maybe soon. Yes. Let's see and then this is the last stamp sheet these are different types of wildflowers. Oh I love this. Yeah it has the wildflower's name on the sheet too. Seems like something your daughter would like. Yes. So and then there's some neat stamps that are out now that you can actually purchase at the USPS website and they use kind of interesting technology in them. So this one is a lenticular stamp and I think you can you see that it's like a dinosaur? Yeah and then you can see the the bones inside. Yeah you can see the bones and this is neat because they used it's like a hologram. Oh I have these ones. Rainbow hologram is my favorite it's just really cool. Yeah I think they've used that effect on some other stamps too kind of like a foil effect and then this one's neat also it's printed on foil so it's a little hard to see but it's shiny. Anyways those are all available right now at the USPS website and they have another set coming out soon that is it's going to feature the sun it's like their new space set that's going to come out this year. That's cool I can't wait to see that so Diana has had sent me over this course of the year she always sends really cool stamps and envelopes and she told me about stamp soaking so this was my chance to try it I was very nervous because some of these are vintage stamps but it was really fun. So all you have to do is because she used color paper you make sure that the if you are soaking multiple stamps at a time they all have the same color envelope otherwise it'll colorize the stamp but this was fine I just had one stamp floating in on top of water it takes about 10 minutes you can go the next screen and then what you can do is actually take it I took it out with the tweezers and then you very carefully kind of blot the paper and stamp on a paper towel and you're able to peel it off if you can see I have the other stamp I had done before on the side there face down because with the older vintage stamps they're still the adhesive on the back so I didn't want it to be wet and to stick to the paper towel so I just kind of let it be upside down I think it just took like maybe 20 minutes half an hour is dry and you can go the next screen once they're dry I just laid them face side up again and they can just kind of dry and then what I did was with the paper towel I folded it over and I put it between some heavy books so it could get flat again and that was it so it was pretty fun and a very easy process I don't know I was very scared and nervous but Diana really helped me through that so it's really fun so this is way you can sort of like when you have when you send fun stamps to people in the mail you can tell them they can soak it and then they can keep these and put them in the most stamp album or keep them you know put them on you know do artwork with them journaling there's so many different things you can do yeah and sometimes I'm you know this must have been kind of a thick envelope or something that we sent it to you on but sometimes the stamp just floats off the envelope on it so yeah stamp peeling off and separating but it really just depends on the stamp and the envelope that you get this envelope was a little bit quicker paper so yeah it didn't separate there that's why I waited the first time I did it I waited for a while longer than I should have yes yeah we were talking about it it was kind of uh so it really should only take 10 minutes or so so yeah wait no sometimes it's less sometimes it's just like pops off and like oh that's cool yeah so I don't I don't know I guess it was just the ones we sent you oh cool anyway it was really fun I thought it was it was great I love this is the vintage flowers there and the birds there so um the gold finch so I love the colors in here too so now it's a time at the end of the episode where we share our favorite things um and I'm going to start by showing you a video that we really like um it's on youtube it's about the us postal system and it's called systems at work and it's really neat because um they sort of use this ultra dramatic music and show how the us postal system works and how mail gets from your house and goes through the mail system and gets delivered at your door my kids love it we've been watching it for like three years and oh that's cool it's super exciting every time they're like wow so dramatic you know the mail really goes far we'll link it down below so you can check it out okay yeah yeah um so next up I know we've talked a lot about stamps in this issue this episode and um this is sort of what my daughter put together for her mini stamp album she used um little planner discs and then used um these sort of plastic sleeves and she stores them all um in here she has like little covers here but she has like her favorites in the front it's based on what she likes so she has like the Apollo one some vintage one some flowers um she kind of likes to organize it herself and sometimes she moves things and looks looks at them so it's been really fun just to serve like a diy little album here and I like the the mini size I like the little pockets in it yeah so this is our stamp album um we've sort of been reverse collecting in that where um we have unused stamps and then we use them to mail to friends let's see uh but it's similar it has the little pockets in it and you can put the stamps in the pockets oh that's cool my kids like to flip through and look at the pictures um to figure out what to send where here's our space page and I think it's really great for um them because it's like you want to try to get the stamps to add up to 55 sets so it's a good way um you know to learn about math and stuff too or to even learn about numbers uh to you know what you know what the number is and you actually um because you started sending all these cute stamps on the envelopes that my daughter was like oh I really want to like collect some of these stamps again and you sent her some to start her collection and then you found um cute there's lots of like stamps for sale on ebay so I went through and found a bunch especially the space ones that she likes and then um it's very like it's a few dollars and I made them as stocking stuffers for for Christmas and so she loved like putting them all in the book and so that was fun and the people that sent them they also put really fun stamps on their envelopes so it's just like this it just keeps going and I I love that um the whole like stamp world yeah yeah I really like buying them on ebay as well because you can get like a little grab bag or something and it's only a couple of dollars but it's fun to get in the mail and look at yeah that was a great tip okay and then this is another book I wanted to share um that uh I actually review a lot of children's books so um Diana uh I sent it to Diana after I reviewed it it's called the extraordinary book that eats itself and um what's cool about this book is not only is it printed on like recycled paper and what have you you the whole book is an activity and uh I think you your girls loved it right yes yeah they've actually done a bunch of the activities in it already um but here's some of the things that they did they made this um like an eco fortune teller oh I love that the cootie catcher yeah and then um they did this thing it's kind of like lenticular so you look at it one way and then look at the other changes well I like that because it's just in time and April is also you know Earth days in April and uh it's all about the environment and how we can be eco-friendly and learning about nature and you know there's all these different activities in there it's kind of a fun book for spring break and getting ready for summer too yeah yeah we've been spending lots of time working on our book uh a really fun virtual event coming up in May that we wanted to share with you guys is the maker music festival and um just like um all the events happening right now everything's online but it's great for families and it's great for kids um we just posted about it on instagram uh yesterday so you can check out our instagram at stem chat um but there is um you can just homemade music um there's okay house cat who takes uh his name's billy and he takes a bunch of like toys and electronics and makes new instruments out of them um there's um sonic marbles where you can learn how to do all these cool like marble runs um with making like sound and music um maki maki lego and playdough instruments for kids uh there's lots of fun things going on so check it out at um w w w maker music festival dot com there's um 120 maker music makers um attending and it'll be in like a virtual building and you'll be able to go into different rooms and buildings online and check everything out so that looks like something fun for next month yeah my daughter's actually really excited about it um she plays violin and she also likes to make her own instruments out of recycle things uh so we've been checking it out on instagram because they post um i guess who the different performers are going to be and we've been checking it every day so she's she's just really excited to try and she's really excited to be able to attend virtually that's two thank you for joining us for this episode of stem chat and we have something really exciting to talk to you about before we go is that we'll be offering soon this butterfly letter pdf and diana has a sample of how kids can cut it out and actually write on the wings of the butterfly uh to their friend anybody in their family and send it off for um our wonderful national card and letter writing month yeah uh this month so find out on instagram how um to download this printable pdf so thank you for watching yeah thank you for watching and we will see you next time bye