January is National Letter Writing Month

Did you know that this month is National letter and card writing month? In today's technological world we often rely on phone calls, emails, texts, tweets, facebook/myspace messages, blogs, television and the internet for all our communication and information needs. This means that handwritten letters are quickly becoming a thing of the past. This month is set aside so that we remember how to use this personal means of communication. Receiving a letter is a great pick me up. It is fun and often uplifting to realize that someone spent the time and effort into hand writing and sending you a letter with all the other means available. Teaching your children how to send letters is an important skill, as they will need to know how to address and write letters when applying for jobs, making business contacts, and for many other reasons. Make the effort to send a letter to a loved one or friend this month and let them know how much they mean to you. Stumped for ideas on what to send them? Try one of these ideas for the whole family:

1. Send them an update on your job, school, hobbies, etc. They would love to hear what you're up to and it gives you a chance to inquire about the same things in their lives.

2. Send a reminder of how much you appreciate another person. It can be in letter, poem, card, list, or some other creative form.

3. Include a game for them. Trace your foot on a piece of paper and create a maze inside of it. This will give the person a unique and stimulating challenge in their letter. Challenge them to create a harder maze for you within their foot's outline and send it back.

4. Make footprints in fun colored, washable paints to send to loved ones. This will give an indication of how much your family has grown. You can include pictures of the family doing this activity to let them see your smiling faces.

5. Send a riddle. Take a picture of your feet in different locations which are familiar to you and your letter receiver and see if they can guess where you're standing. Challenge them to send you a stumper back.

6. Go geocaching or hiking and document the places your feet have taken you with GPS navigational points and pictures. Challenge your friend to recreate your picture and send you a challenge back. Not sure what geocaching is? It is setting up a cache, or hiding place for an item, based on global positioning system (GPS) satellite coordinates. Then the person can follow their own GPS to the same location in which you were. Sometimes people leave prizes for others which they mark as a "geocache". You can even register your cache online and others can register that they have visited your location. You can easily take a photo and send it to your pen pal with your letter, story of your adventure, and your coordinates.

7. Find a foreign pen pal. Finding a person from another culture to share correspondence with is fun and expands your world. You can learn a lot from the other person and how they live their life. Try to compare what kind of shoes you wear on your feet or what games you play with them.

If you think of any other ideas involving letter writing and your feet, we would love to hear them and try them ourselves. We encourage you not to miss out on a chance to remember how fun letter writing and receiving can be.