There is no better way to conclude a lesson than to actually experience the learning “for real.” That was the lesson taught recently when kindergarten teacher Sophie Ricouard of the San Diego French-American School (SDFAS) arranged to have her class tour the Pacific Beach post office on Cass Street. The behind-the-scenes tour capped a year-long project as her kindergarten students experience a creative new means to help them learn to write in cursive, print and decipher the letters and sounds. The “card-exchange experience” started with the creation of a yellow mailbox, the kind typically found on the streets of France. Then, before each school break, Ricouard paired up two students and asked them to write a card to each other. The experience was repeated after each school break and as the children’s writing skills progressed, the students are now writing small sentences on their postcards, rather than just drawing and signing their names as they initially did. To bring home the experience and bring it full circle, the students paid a visit to the Pacific Beach post office, where postal representative Debby Daffer gave the students a tour and explained how incoming letters are sorted and organized before the 70 mail workers go on their daily mail runs.   Daffer explained what happens when people change their address and how big parcels are managed. The tour included a quick visit of the basement to check out the USPS vans. Finally, the children purchased stamps, date-stamped their personal envelopes and then posted them. In a few days, the letters were expected to arrive at the school, addressed to their English teacher.