Pen pal station for kids

Who doesn’t like to get mail? A pen pal station for kids is the perfect way to develop your kids’ reading and writing skills in a super fun and engaging way.

My kids love to write letters now.

Plus, with all the fun supplies and resources I included in their pen pal kit, they’ve become pretty independent letter writers, which makes this a great quiet time activity.

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Supply list

Here are the supplies I used to create this adorable little pen pal station for my kids:

Storage bin

I’ve been seeing this storage bin on Instagram lately, and decided to try it out.

I wanted something that could keep all our supplies organized, but that I could still tuck away in a cabinet when we weren’t using it.

When I saw this bin in person, I was so excited- it’s perfect!

Writing supplies

I started out by grabbing a bunch of art supplies (washi tape, markers, paper and envelopes) from supplies that we already had at home.

(I included our favorite Amazon felt-tip marker pens, which we use all the time!)

Then I added a few new purchases: this stationary & envelope set, and a new sticker book.

My kids have been tearing out sticker pages from this book and including them along with their letters as a little gift to their pen pals.

I also bought new postcards for the Postcrossing project we started doing- read more about that below.

And, of course, we stocked up on postage stamps.

Helpful pages

After filling our pen pal kit with all the supplies my kids could possibly need, I decided to include a few helpful pages that they could reference as they were writing letters.

I found this friendly letter printable for free on Teachers Pay Teachers, and printed it to give the kids some guidance on how to write a basic letter.

I found this page on How to Address an Envelope (also free on Teachers Pay Teachers) and filled it in with our own address in the return address space.

For each of my kids, I also created their own “address book.” (It’s just a list of the names and addresses of a few of their friends that I thought they might like to write to.) I also made a family address book with the addresses of grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Now they can send letters without asking me to address them- yay!

Download the address book template

You can download your own address book here, print it, and fill it in for your own kids:

Postcrossing

My kids have had a blast writing back and forth with their friends, and finding small things like stickers and bookmarks that they can send to each other.

But if you also want to use your pen pal station to learn about other countries, I highly recommend a program called Postcrossing.

Postcrossing is a postcard exchange project. Your kids can send and receive postcards from people in other countries. It’s totally free, and my kids love getting mail from around the world.

Have fun creating your own pen pal station for your kids! And if you take a picture, please tag me on Instagram- I’d love see it!

-Laura

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