Connecting with Distant Grandchildren

The other day I got a comment in Facebook that got me thinking. (Thinking, an unusual activity for me, huh??)

I know it stinks when your grandchildren live far away and that you can’ do a drive-by-scoop-them-up-hug-and-kiss-them-and-say-good-bye quick visit.  It’s difficult to build a strong relationship with those far away grandkiddos.  So I’ve come up with a few ideas of things that you could do using the good ol’ U.S. postal mail.  I’ll post part of them today and then part of them in two days.

Our grandchildren love to play with our ping pong balls.  Being only 3, 1 and 3/4, almost 1 1/2 and almost 1 year old, they aren’t quite into playing ping pong by the rules.  (Sheesh! Why am I talking about rules? They are not tall enough to even see the top of the ping pong table!) 

Anyway, back to the ping pong balls.  Write a short letter, draw a picture, or write a poem on the ball with a permanent marker.  Mail the ball to your grandchild.  Not only does she get an unusual letter in the mail from her grandmother, she gets a fun ball to play with. (If you buy a package of ping pong balls, write something on all of the balls.  You could send them all together or one at a time.)

Write a regular letter to your grandchild.  Then, on the opened inside flap of an envelope, draw a picture, maze, or write a joke.  (You’ve got to be sure that your envelopes are not the privacy envelopes with the blue design on the insides of the envelope.)  When your grandchild gets a letter from you, he will enjoy seeing what you have added to the inside of the envelope.  (You could do the same thing to the outside of the envelope, too.)

Back in the Dark Ages when I was in college, I wrote a unique letter home to my parents.  What I said wasn’t especially unique because I’m rather a boring, blah individual . Rather.  What I DID to the letter was unique.  (At least at the time I thought it was unique . . . ) I cut up the letter into a puzzle so that my parents had to put it together before they read it.  You could do the same thing for your grandchildren. Oh, and don’t use boring white paper.  Go to you local copy center or scrapbook store and get some wild neon bright colored paper.  (Or the cutesy paper that scrapbook stores sell.)

I must have been going through a phase at the time that I wrote that letter because I was also into making unique envelopes.  I made them out of pictures from a magazine.  For grandchildren, select pictures that are on topics of interest to them.  They will be delighted to get that type of envelope in the mail.

For those of my readers who may not be familiar with Grandma Lisa over at Grandma Briefs, I want to introduce you to her.  She is a fabulous grandmother.  And, she knows all about the pain of being a distant grandma.  She’s also creative.  She creating a fun mailbox for her grandson so that he could receive her snail mail letters in his very own special mailbox.  Read here about her her idea.