It All Started With A Letter ~ The Queen's Letters

Making the Impossible More Bearable

The Queens Letters Created by Heather Wombacher 2020

I am writing this as I reflect on a time of great uncertainty, 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a time when schools closed and we learned, rather quickly, the art of pivoting as teachers. We began solving the problems of in-class teaching to remote teaching in a matter of weeks. For my school, it was two weeks. My biggest dilemma was how do I get second graders to keep writing and practicing their cursive, and teach them history and reading.

It all started with a letter.

One of my sweet students sent me a letter filled with what she had been doing to keep herself busy during such a crazy time. This sweet gesture was the spark in the dark for The Queen’s Letters.

In my Classical Education 2nd grade classroom my students were engaged in Medieval History we called our classroom Wombachia and I was the Queen of Wombachia. Each summer I would send prospective 2nd graders a letter from the Queen as an introduction to what they would learn the next year. So naturally the Queen would write to them in physical letters sent via the US postal service. I would send out letters on “parchment paper” with envelopes sealed with wax. These letters contained the Queen’s musings and many questions about the things in our history reading for example: strange scientists who claim to have seen many moons around Jupiter. I would ask questions like,” Will you report back what this is all about? Tell me everything that you learn. Perhaps, I would like to meet this scientist they call Galello Gallei. “

My students loved it and would respond via snail mail with the answers to my questions but they would also include drawings and Bible verses aged on the edges. They also took on character names like Lord Greyson, Lady Katherine, and Queen Bridget of Harlowland, how cute is that? I couldn’t wait for the mail to come because nearly every day something wonderful would be found in the letters from these sweet children. Then summer came. I am proud of the work we accomplished, and that we ended the year well.

Over the summer, as things began to ease up a bit, I began to see that I needed to commemorate this experience. So I created an art book not only for myself but also, for the children who participated in our experimental learning. This book is so special to me. The “assignment letters” were typed and sent to everyone through Google Classrooms. It holds the original letters from myselt but also the letters from the children, along with my handwritten responses to each student. I purposely blocked the addresses with sticky notes, but you can still enjoy it. It is a mixed-media book. I used an old volume of Daphne’s Diary Magazine as the substrate for this book. I used paints, collage ephemera, and decorative napkins, I also included the original envelopes and colored copies of the letters. It was such a labor of love I created 6 additional student books (what else was I going to do that summer?) I made a simple signature that housed the letters and then created a personalized cover with their name for them.

Here is a flip-through of the Queen’s Letters.