Does anybody else have a child in early elementary school that would like to have a penpal this summer? We are looking for activities to keep her schoolwork sharp during the break. We’ve lived in several different countries, so international would be a plus. This can be via email, but some snailmail would be fun (then you get something in the mailbox AND cool stamps).
If you’re interested post here and we’ll work out details.
Ms A. is 7 years old, just finished first grade (American system). We currently reside in the Cincinnati, Ohio area.
I’ve got four out of five to choose from.
My oldest son and Stuffys son are going to start the snail mail thing.
Josh already has a letter written but wants to make sure it is perfect before we send it out.
Okay, for those keeping track that is a first grader (girl), second grader (boy), seventh grader (girl) and ninth grader (girl). Sixth grader boy already taken.
I’m thinking if we have a bunch of younger ones they can do postcards maybe?
Just another suggestion… with the international variations in education systems, it might be better simply to state the children’s ages rather than their grade.
In my experience all kids love getting mail. When my kids and my nieces and nephews were little I used to get stuff sent to them all the time - free offers, samples, advertising materials, refunds for buying products. There are hundreds of things you can get just by contacting the appropriate people. What was really cool was they had no idea how or why the stuff was coming, it would just appear addressed to them personally. I was also big on sending postcards whenever I was somewhere different. With the international nature of the SDMB it should be easy to set up any kid to receive a pile of international postcards. I’d be happy to send several/lots from Australia. How could we arrange this???
Wow, nice response overnight from the OzDopers! I was worried that this was going to die on the vine. As background, this idea came to me for a couple of reasons: my daughter received a letter from one of her classmates the other day. This was one of the few times she’s received mail for no special reason, just because someone was thinking of her. She was so excited that she immediately wrote back. Yesterday she checked the mail and no response yet (our local mail doesn’t even travel that fast, it would take at least two days to get a letter out and back). So she wrote another letter to her friend, so she’d have one ready to send back immediately. My son, who is five years old, was disappointed because he “nevers gets any mail!” So Ms A, who is a very good big sister, wrote another letter to him, complete with a portrait of him on the back, and secretly put it into our mailbox. Then she told him she thought he might have a letter. The look of pure joy on his face as he bounced back from the mailbox was priceless.
After reading through the responses thus far, it looks like we have to main avenues here:
A true penpal system for kids of similar ages and
A postcard/mail exchange, which might be better for younger children.
I’ll try to organize both here. I know that my daughter is prolific, so she’ll write to just about everybody and anybody that would write to her. Not sure if everyone will be quite that enthusiastic. So it might be best to start out with one penpal per kid, see how that goes, and work from there. I’ll work this offline, because I don’t want real names or addresses in a public space. For example, it sounds like Gundy’s and Arden Ranger’s son would be a good match, same age, gender, probably share some interests, etc. I’ll play matchmaker that way, feel free to request more than one correspondent, but also don’t let your kid overcommit or you could disappoint someone else.
Then I’ll start a new thread for the Global Doper Kid Mail/Postcard Exchange. This will be targeted towards getting Dopers from everywhere to send postcards to the kids that want them. We’ll work that sort of like a secret Santa. We’ll have people self nominate to receive and send. This will work better for younger kids (who still like to receive mail) and older kid’s who might collect stamps or postcards. But expect this correspondence to be mainly one way.
Well, I’m way too old to be anyone’s pen pal, but I’ll gladly send Florida post cards to any kids whose parents ask. Just zap me an e-mail with an address and maybe a suggestion of what the kid would like to see.
Um, by Florida, I don’t mean Disney, tho. Just beach scenes and gators and stuff like that.
ShibbOleth, it looks as though I’ll be headed down to the Post Office tomorrow to dash off a postcard to Arden’s son. If you email me sharpish, I’ll be happy to send off another one or two for your kids while I’m at it.
Ok, Shibb, email received and replied to. I’ll be sending your kids a card each tomorrow (allow a week or two for delivery). This, of course, is outside of any organised card sending programme you may organise, but if you do one, I’ll be involved in that too.
This is an excellent idea! My eight-year-old daughter would love to participate. She likes nothing better than to get mail.
I had a penpal when I was her age and I have great memories of it (this was back in the dark ages before the Internet, of course)
