Pen Pals Wanted! | Imamother

DVOM

Tue, Mar 07 2017, 3:33 am

G'morning everyone!

There have been lots of discussions lately about the quantity and quality of yeshiva elementary school education. My kids go to a Lakewood yeshiva with a decent but bare-bones secular education. We do a lot of supplementing at home.

That's where you guys come in! We're looking for new pen pals, and imamother seemed like a good way to try and find some! Having pen pals lets my kids practice their writing skills, motivates them to do research and ask critical questions on topics that interest them.

The job description: Recieve letters from and write letters to my 6 and 8-year-old sons. They're not picky about age or gender. Did your now retired grandma or grampa have an interesting career or live through an interesting time in history? Would they get a kick out of exchanging letters with my boys, answering endless questions, and being the recipient of very lovingly drawn artistic masterpieces? Do you live in another country and have a kid who wants an American pen pal?

My kids are particularly interested right now in outerspace (are you a nasa scientist!? We want to be penpals with you!) Russia and China (Do you live in these countries? Wanna exchange pennies? My boys do!) and animals ("Do you think any zookeepers or farmers want to be pen pals with us?"). My boys are also fascinated by fossils and 'digging for gold'. If you are a paleontologist, and can write even one letter with my kids, we would be so very grateful!

Have a good one galls!

JAWSCIENCE

Tue, Mar 07 2017, 6:25 am

Thinking about your topics I wanted to suggest some activities that we recently did as a family
If you have the time. I'm always looking g for these types of things too!

Outer space - most recent family trip was to Washington. The smithsonian museums including the museum of air and space are free. So the main cost of the trip was the Amtrak and the hotel. The air and space museum has a big kids area and demonstrations on how flight works and a large area where you walk through and learn about the planets.

Animals: the ny zoos actually have week long summer camps were your kids can help take care of animals etc. they also have one day camps on holidays like Veterans Day and Presidents' Day. This is a pricier activity and you have to be ok with your kid mingling with non Jewish kids. But it sounds very exciting.

Digging for fossils etc. the Jewish museum
In Manhattan has a kids area where they have a large sand pit and kids dig and find artifacts. Look up when it's open as it is not everyday. The museum of natural history has a giant room of minerals and the kids can Touch some etc. with a nyc id you can get in free at least for the first year.

Im a physician and scientist. I have a five year old. We'd be happy to write some letters but we don't fit into your categories. Good luck, it's a great idea!

DVOM

Tue, Mar 07 2017, 11:30 am

Hi guys! Thanks for responding.

Lisa-- that's sweet, thanks!

Jaws-- Great ideas! We did the Smithsonian Air and Space museum a little bit ago, and my kids loved it. NY zoos are so far from us:( I'm fine with the mingling, but on a regular basis I cant to such long trips. Digging for fossils is a current obsession. We actually took the kids this past summer to Herkimer NY, where you can dig for you own quartz crystals and keep what you find. It was loads of fun. We've visited the Museum of Natural History, but not for a while.

Thanks for the offer to pen pal! Is it ok if I pm you? Let's see if we could set something up!

JAWSCIENCE

Tue, Mar 07 2017, 12:49 pm

DVOM wrote:

Sure. There's a national Park where you pan for diamonds in the Midwest too. Never had the time to go but it sounds fun.

mommy3b2c

Tue, Mar 07 2017, 1:03 pm

It's really cute, because my kids are interested in a lot of these things your kids are interested in. My kids have jars full of "fossils" that they dug up at the beach. We're not scientists are zookeepers (although I aspired to be one as a kid), but I think it would be nice if our kids could write letters to each other about their mutual interests.