[press release]
Using First Day Covers In Education:
AFDCS Makes Free Teaching Aids Available

First day covers are the perfect philatelic medium for education, because the cachets allow more information about the events and people on the stamps. Now, teachers and other educators can download from the American First Day Cover Society website eight booklets, each consisting of 12 to 19 lessons, using FDCs.

They were developed by AFDCS director Kris McIntosh, a retired high school social studies teacher with nearly 40 years of experience in education. The lessons cover American and Texas history from the colonization of North America through the Gilded Age and the Great Depression and into Barack Obama’s presidency. The e-books McIntosh has prepared include illustrations of FDCs, discussion, quizzes and reviews.

“First day covers are primary sources that can add diversity in a teacher’s tool kit,” writes McIntosh.

They can be downloaded at www.afdcs.org/FDClessons.html Membership in the AFDCS is not required to use the lesson plans, but each issue of the society’s bi-monthly journal First Days includes more stories and information about first day covers, both current and historical. The AFDCS also publishes handbooks, catalogues and directories, produces video presentations on Zoom and makes them available on its YouTube Channel, and advocates for first day cover collecting and exhibiting. The AFDCS also is a co-host of Great American Stamp Show, which next will be held August 25-28, 2022, in Sacramento, Calif.

Memberships start at $24 a year (without printed copies of First Days). Junior members (ages 17 and under) are $20 and do include the printed journal.

For more information on the AFDCS, visit its website www.afdcs.org, email afdcs@afdcs.org or write to the society at Post Office Box 246, Colonial Beach, VA 22443-0246.