We Play: International Postcard Swap

This week we've been busy preparing our letters, cards and pictures for Playing By the Book's wonderful International Postcard Swap for Families.

The big girls have written letters and drawn pictures for the families we have been given (one in the UK, one in the US, one in India, one in Japan and one in NSW - very exciting!) We have also composed a family letter together to go with each package that tells a little about our family and a lot about our reading habits (this being, in fact, a literary-themed swap!)

The toddler got involved too, helping me select the photos for a picture-page that we also put into the package. She was insistent that we had to include lots of a'muls - hence the emu, wombats and koala pictured in this post!

Writing letters and postcards is a brilliant and fun way to encourage literacy in children, and I have known this for a while, but there is an added dimension to writing to people overseas that I hadn't quite anticipated.

The girls are waiting with great anticipation for their own international mail to start trickling in, and they are really thrilling to the idea of reading books recommended by people in faraway places.

A, my almost 8 year old, is hoping that we get some recommendations of things that are "not books we'd normally know about", and I couldn't agree more.