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Every January when we resume our schoolwork, and also for the week or so after each child’s birthday, the language arts instruction in our homeschool centers around writing thank you notes. In today’s world of electronic communication, I believe that learning to write meaningful thank you notes is a valuable lesson. Most everyone loves to receive personal mail, and when the letter is one that expresses gratitude, it brings even more happiness to the recipient.
Here are some helpful hints when teaching your children how to write thank you notes.
- Provide Appropriate Supplies: I sometimes give stationary as gifts to my children. Personalized stationary makes letter writing fun. You can also provide the children with blank paper or notecards, markers, stamps and ink, and stickers, and then let them design their own stationary. Decorating the envelopes can be fun too.
- Help the Children Make a List of People to Write: Each child makes a list of gifts received and the giver. I help younger children make their list. Usually on the first day back to school after the holiday season, making the list and designing the stationary is all that we do.
- Model Writing the Letters: I model writing thank you notes in two different ways. 1. I write a sample thank you note on our marker board, discussing with the children all of elements that they need to include. I teach them to write a sentence or two telling the person how they are using or playing with the gift. Then they also include a sentence or two expressing their appreciation for the person thinking of them by giving them a gift. 2. I write actual thank you notes myself while they are writing theirs.
- Divide the Task Into Manageable Amounts: Younger children may write only one thank you note each day, while an older child can write two, three, or even four.
- Be Creative With Young Children: As soon as your child can scribble, he can contribute. For the very young child, I write the thank you completely by myself, and then let the child “sign” the note with a scribble. When the child can draw, I ask him to draw a picture for the thank you note recipient, and then I will include a note expressing thanks or even write the letter on the drawing itself. A preschool or kindergarten aged child can dictate a letter to me, sign his name, and include a picture.
- Teach How To Address the Envelope: I use my marker board to illustrate what the front of an addressed envelope should look like. I teach them where to put the return address, recipient’s address, and stamp. I also provide return address labels (it is fun to make these on the computer with the children) and stamps.
To encourage letter writing year round, I keep a folder of return addresses, stamps, and a list of addresses of people that my children commonly write letters to. This list includes their friends, pen pals, elderly people in our church family, and relatives. Throughout our school year, I normally require my children to write one letter a week to someone on the list.
In addition to writing thank you notes, Roan writes regularly at her personal blog, Joyful Always. Her blog posts include tips for homeschooling, homemaking, organization, and running. Roan is the mother of five children, ages 4,6,11,13, and 15.
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We do the same thing here, but we haven’t worked on addressing envelopes yet. I have my oldest watch, so she knows how, but her handwriting just isn’t up to the task just yet. We still draw pictures or sometimes take photographs of the kids with their gifts, especially for relatives who send cash to see how their gift was put to good use. Thanks for the reminder to take out the old scrapbooking supplies. Sometimes I forget to make it fun!
Oh yes! Learning to write thank you notes is such an important skill to master. Our girls have been required to write their own thank you notes for a few years now and they’re getting quite good at it too. So thankful for that! Excellent post.
We too write Thank You’s (even some at the end of the year to thank dance, swimming teachers, etc), especially as much of our family resides in a different country to us. Each year it is the same, the making and decorating of the card is met with much enthusiasm and joy but the actual writing of the thank you is painful and labourious. Not so much the thinking of what to say but the actual wiriting for them (they are 6 and 8). This year for a change, I let them use a card making package I have on the computer and boy did it make life easy. They each got to design their card to use this year and they had a ball typing each individual thank you before printing it up (they changed fonts and sizes). They each added a picture taken of themselves on Christmas day on the back with their contact details. It was met with so much fun and enthusiasm. They were changing the fonts and even adding more than they would normally say to each person. Then they started looking for extra people to thank … lol
Nice how-tos. I just had Sprite add a short note inside a thank you card that I sent. (A family was very kind to us, inviting us to lunch, giving us a gift, and also giving Sprite a box of Barbies with clothes.) I “counted” that as a school assignment!
When my kids were old enough to print, but not yet ready to write whole thank yous on their own, we started writing “grad libs.” I typed up a letter on the computer leaving out key words or phrases. I printed the letter and they wrote in the words to complete the letter. I blogged about it here, if anyone is interested in a more thorough description:
http://mcquill-land.blogspot.com/2010/01/gratituesday-works-for-me-wednesday.html
It was a lot of fun, and the recipients enjoyed how the kids’ personalities came through in their choice of words/phrases to fill in the blanks.