When you send your children off to camp each year, you hope to get notes about their activities and friends for your scrapbook. However, so far, you’ve only received one scribbled message on a half sheet of paper from one child and two notes on the backs of candy bar wrappers stuffed into a single used looking envelope from the other. This year is going to be different. You’re ordering postcards and putting your address and a postage stamp on them. Then you are giving enough to each child so that you can get news twice a week.

Postcards are a great option for kids who are going away to summer camp, especially if you put them in a decorative container, along with pencils with a character design on them and a pencil sharpener. If your child is really a reluctant writer and you are desperate for news from camp, it may not be enough, though. For kids that hate to write, consider creating a checklist on the postcards. A sample checklist could include:

• I’m homesick.
• I’m having a blast.
• The food is great.
• The food is gross.
• I have poison ivy.
• I’m the only one who doesn’t have poison ivy.
• I went swimming.
• I won a prize.
• Other ____________________.