I'm always looking for ideas to do with my kids. I saw this idea back in 2011 and started it with B when he was six-years-old. A few years later, I started it with M. We still write back and forth to one another in it. As B and I were writing this summer and looking back over what we have written since 2011, we realized this book has become a small treasure. So I simply couldn't keep it to myself (after all, it wasn't my idea to start with)!!
This is a "response journal" or "pen pal" or "mama and me" (the name that was used when I saw the idea on Pinterest) notebook with your child. Think of it as a letter exchange with your child. To start it, I wrote the first note explaining how it would work. He wrote back, and viola we have this small treasure now where we write one another notes.
If I have something I want to share with one of my boys, I write a note in his book and leave it on his bed. When he finds it, he responds with a note of his own and then leaves it on my bed...and vice versa. Often, there will be an exchange of several entries over the course of a few days. When we aren't using it, we keep it in the bookcase in each of their bedrooms. Sometimes we go months without writing one another. And when that happens, it is true that I am almost always the one who has to go find this notebook in his bookcase and initiate a "letter conversation" with him. And sometimes the journal will go unopened for months at a time. This is fine. There are no rules to our letter exchange.
Sometimes our entries are silly (see entry on the right);
other times they are serious. It doesn't matter though -- we are communicating with one another. B will turn 12 this summer and we still write to one another. Six years strong so far!
So what do you say? Kids should be writing over the summer anyway. Why not start this NO RULE journal for the two of you?