Letterbox Penpals

With all the latest technology and communication available via email, text and phone, letter writing can often be forgotten. I feel it's important to put pen to paper from time to time as it's fun for little ones to receive post and it helps them practise their writing skills, but finding someone to write to can be difficult.

Letterbox Penpals enables children and adults to make penpals in a safe way. They provide a forwarding service so you can withhold your address details from your penpals until you feel comfortable enough to provide them. I had been looking for penpals for the Mini Mes for some time and Letterbox Penpals approached me.

Membership is usually £5 for 3 months for a child and £8 for adults. There are free memberships for disabled children, young carers and people of the forces and discounts available for families and groups. Membership includes your details being listed on the website to advertise that you are looking for people to write to and having your letters sent on to you from the service.
If you wish to write to a penpal listed this service is free. You can use the membership numbers provided online to respond.

Registering is very simple. You can download forms and post them or complete them online and after payment has been authorised your listing will become live after just a few days.

As the service has not long been running it took a while for post to arrive but when it did Jamster was thrilled! He received a lovely letter with a few other bits included from a little boy named Ben who has similar interests and is the same age. Jamster enjoyed reading the letter over and over and planning his response. He wrote his letter back beautifully and put a lot more effort into his writing than usual!  He also decided to include some stickers, quiz sheets and tattoos too for his new friend.

Since the first letter Jamster has written a few times and also sent a Halloween card. He likes to find out what his penpal likes and what he has been up to and replying to his post.

I would recommend this service however, it's still early days so there aren't that many penpals involved as yet. It would be lovely to spread the word and get more support so lots of children get back to having penpals again like I used to as a child.

*We received free family membership for Letterbox Penpals for the purpose of this review. The opinions given are honest and our own.*