Did you have a penpal growing up?

[luckystar112]

My penpal was my grandfather. I''m sure we only wrote back and forth a few times before I got bored with it (being a kid and all), but I still remember and cherish that about our relationship.

I also remember my french teacher in middle school making us be penpals with a class from France.

Penpals are great for so many reasons:
-You can practice your handwriting, print and cursive.
-You learn better sentence structure.
-You learn how to format a letter, and how to mail it.
-Not to mention the great conversations and the anticipation of checking the mail!

I''m a substitute teacher and recently I brought up penpals to one of my classes (8th grade, I believe) and they had no idea what a penpal was.

Things like that make me sad...

 

[meresal]

Yes... I met a girl on a family trip to Club Med in Mexico one Christmas, that was the same age as me, and her family was from Chicago. We wrote back and forth for about a year, and it trailed off.

I still have some of her letters, I may look her up now that I'm thinking about it.

 

[luckystar112]

Wow, that''s cool! How old were you when you were penpals?

 

[meresal]

I think we were 10 or 11. Now that I think about it, it was pretty cool. Our parents were the ones that made sure we swapped addresses, and we would send pictures back and forth.

I''ll have to dig them up the next time I''m at my parents house. I go thru old letters and papers sometimes, and I remember running across one a few months ago.

 

[kittybean]

My penpal was my second cousin in Ukraine. I got to practice writing in both languages, and so did he. We wrote back and forth for a couple years. I also wrote a lot of letters to friends from camp--I still absolutely love to get a handwritten note on pretty stationery in the mail.

 

[reader]

Yep, two, that I met at campgrounds...

Wendy Jones, from PA

Megan Davis from NJ... can''t find either on facebook...

 

[bee*]

Yes I had a spanish penpal growing up. We actually met up twice as well as she came to Dublin to study english for a while. We just kind of stopped writing to each other after a while. I''d love to know what''s up with her now and find out what she''s doing but I can''t find her address.

 

[oobiecoo]

I was in a gifted program in 1st grade called "Vega" and we were paired up with students from other Vega programs in our district. I still remember my penpal''s name! We wrote several letters and would chat on field trips. I even saw her many years later at a craft fair and so we caught up on things. I really enjoyed having a penpal!

 

[Kelli]

LOL I met a boy from Austria once at a hotel when I was ten or so, and for some reason our parents got to talking and he became a penpal for a while. He sent me pictures of himself and everything, but I can''t really remember sending things back. I''m sure I must have a little bit though, my mom probably wouldn''t have let me totally ignore it.

 

[jet2ks]

Date: 4/26/2009 11:17:50 PM
Author:luckystar112
My penpal was my grandfather. I''m sure we only wrote back and forth a few times before I got bored with it (being a kid and all), but I still remember and cherish that about our relationship.

I also remember my french teacher in middle school making us be penpals with a class from France.

Penpals are great for so many reasons:
-You can practice your handwriting, print and cursive.
-You learn better sentence structure.
-You learn how to format a letter, and how to mail it.
-Not to mention the great conversations and the anticipation of checking the mail!

I''m a substitute teacher and recently I brought up penpals to one of my classes (8th grade, I believe) and they had no idea what a penpal was.

Things like that make me sad...

I had a couple of teachers that tried to get us to do penpals, but I was horrible on follow up letters.

Actually, your 8th graders probably do have penpals, they just call them by another name. E-mail, Facebook, Twitter, texting etc. could probably be seen as the tech version. How many kids have Facebook "friends" they have never met IRL? For that matter, couldn''t Pricescope be considered a modern interpretation of penpals?

The biggest problem I see is that kids using text & Facebook are making their grammar, spelling, sentence structure and formatting worse instead of better.

 

[D&T]

yep- she was in another country. it was really fun,, of course I did this until I started Junior High.

 

[packrat]

That''s too bad your 8th graders didn''t know what a penpal was. We had them starting in 3rd grade. Just another school district, nobody super far away. And we''d send helium balloons with our school address on it..and it was sooo cool to get a response back from someone hours away. When I was in Junior High and used to read Metal Edge magazine religiously, a group of my friends sent our names in for the Directory. It lists your name and address and the bands you like. My name finally got in the summer before my Freshman year, and I ended up w/some cool penpals. One of them, we wrote back and forth until I got married. And then lo and behold last year on myspace, after 7 years, I get a message titled "From Traddimer" (that''s what I called him) and I about cried I was so excited! One of my friends ended up marrying one of her penpals from the magazine.

 

[OUpearlgirl]

Our school set us up with Pen Pals, mine was from London. I so enjoyed talking with her. I think we kept it up for a little over a year.

I also was a bit of a pen pal with a best friend who moved to Chicago in 4th grade. Now we just keep up through facebook.