I am always so impressed when my kids receive a thank you note from a friend just days after his party.  I always think to myself, “Impressive.”  Let’s be honest, we know that the child isn’t begging to write a note to each of his friends!  His mother made it a priority and got them in mail.  And I know that it is WORK!  On the flip side, it is important to me that my boys understand the importance of expressing gratitude-whether it be in person or through the mail.

Little Man had a birthday last month and I was determined to send thank yous!  He usually has little-to-no stamina {or interest} when it comes to “extra” work!  This was going to be tricky.  When I found this thank you card kit for kids there was hope!

Here are my tips for writing thank you notes with kids:

1.  Keep it fun.

The awesome card kit came with 10 colored thank you cards and a ton of African-themed stickers.  Little Man and I spent time at the kitchen table decorating the cards with monkeys, lions, plants, flowers and speech bubbles.  This work was easy, we chatted, and there was little resistance!

2.  Decrease frustration.

When children are little, writing multiple cards is very taxing.  To decrease the frustration and fatigue, I scanned and printed the inside of one of the colorful cards.  Little Man wrote a simple message.  Then we scanned and printed enough copies of his message for each of the thank you cards.  Next, we cut and pasted the message into the cards.  He loved watching the papers come off the printer with his hand writing.  {I also had him simply write his name on the envelope as the return address and I took care of the rest.}

3.  Do a little at a time. 

Writing, cutting, pasting, licking, writing.  It takes time and isn’t super exciting.  The best thing to do is to break the whole project into pieces.  Just do a little at a time.  We did the stickers and took a break.  He wrote the message and we took a break.  It actually took us the better part of an afternoon to complete the cards.  There were a few moments of whining, but no tears.  I will call that a success.

The cards are in the mail.  They didn’t get there days after the party, but they got there just the same.

Tags: life with boys, Little Man

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 21st, 2014 at 11:17 am and is filed under Life with Boys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.