If you've never tried being a penpal you're missing out on a world of fun. Penpals come in all ages, nationalities and cultures. Write to kids your age in Germany, Hawaii, Australia, England, or Japan. Anywhere you can exchange letters in any language you can write. With a little researching you can even find a penpal at the north pole.
There's more to writing letters than good grammar and punctuation. Writing is a great way to practice your grammar and punctuation but more important is the letter itself. At first you may think you have nothing interesting to write about. So, make a list of things you like to do, your hobbies, what you especially like about school, who your friends are, your brothers and sisters, pets, places you have been, your after school routine, favourite websites, things that you like and things that make you angry. From this list you have an endless supply of things to write about. Also, you can ask questions about your penpals routine, their life and family.
One of my favourite things to find out about was dandelions. Doesn't sound like much of a question, maybe. But think about it. Is there any place in the world where they don't have dandelions? So far, I haven't found one. Maybe you will. Can they really be everywhere. Anyway, you will develop your own questions from things that interest you.
Finding penpals is not too hard. You can choose to have penpals or keypals. Keypals write through email and penpals write through the regular old mail. Keypals have the advantage of not needing stamps. Penpals have the advantage of being an actual letter, its nice to have something just for you in the mailbox. Also, you can trade postcards, stamps and anything else light and flat enough to fit inside and envelope. I always enjoyed having nice stationary to write with too. Sometimes I would find pens with different coloured inks. You can't do that with keypals unless they can get HTML email ok, not everyone can.
Look for penpal clubs on the Internet. There are clubs for keypals, penpals and both. You might have your parents check for the best places for kids to find penpals. Adults and teenagers are sometimes looking for romantic penpals and not just fun friends. So its a good idea to be sure you are looking in the right place for you. Once you find a good club choose a country you would like to know more about. Maybe you don't prefer a country but are happy to write to other kids in your own area. All you need to is look for other girls or boys your own age then. When you choose your penpal or penpals keep a copy of their address and write down any other information available about their interests.
Now you are ready to write that first letter to introduce yourself. Its kind of hard to know what to say to a total stranger. If you feel chatty go ahead and write. Mainly, you need to tell them who you are, where you are and why you would like to write to them. That's really enough information for a first letter. Not everyone you write to will write back. There is a chance they have moved, have enough penpals already, lost interest in writing or just didn't think you had a lot in common with them. Don't write to more than a couple of penpals at once, when you get started. It can be a bit more time consuming than you expected. It may take a week or a few weeks for letters to go back and forth but writing them can take quite a bit of time. Always try to write a couple of pages, make it a letter not just a note.
Penpals also make and pass around friendship books. Those are small booklets made by stapling together cut up paper into a booklet. They are decorated and the person who starts the book writes their name and address as the first person sending the book. Most people hope to see the book again once its full so they add their return address to the back cover of the book too. Friendship books are fun, you can see where they have been in a trail back to the original sender. If you get one try to pass it on as soon as you can. If you want to make one remember to keep it light, too many pages will cost more in stamps to send for yourself and everyone else.
Of course, there are other ways of finding penpals and other ways of writing to them. Get creative. Try writing to a company in another country and ask if anyone working there has kids that would write to you. Photocopy something interesting in the newspaper and write your penpal letter on the back of it. That gives your pal even more to read. Send a postcard of your local area. If you pick up a travel brochure send that too. Ask for letterhead from your school and use it for stationary in your next letter. There are all kinds of things you can do with letter writing. You are only limited by your own imagination and the envelope you mail your letter in.
Once upon a time a signature wasn’t much more than a show of good penmanship. Now a signature can be plain, just links, maybe a quote. Signatures in HTML are colourful and fancy but too clunky for downloading with email. I like ASCII art signatures best of all. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, your basic everyday keyboard characters. Its become a tradition for ASCII art to only use the characters you can actually see on your keyboard. If you get into the alt key the art becomes ANSI art.