Birthday Letters - A Challenge?

I love to plan birthday letters - usually. They can be easy to do, specially when the child is a frequent letter writer who provides a lot of information about their likes and dislikes.

But if I haven't heard from a kid yet or he or she doesn't write many letters it can be difficult to find things to send.

When I need inspiration for birthday letters I usually browse the web for ideas. I love to read blogs about what other sponsors send to their birthday children, so I thought I'd use this entry to share my ideas and hopefully it'll help to provide ideas to someone else looking for something to send as a birthday gift.

In the past few weeks I had to get five birthday letters ready to be sent out - some were easy; some weren't.

The first birthday letters I had to get done were the ones for Chistian (he'll turn 12 on April 1st) and Heriberto (who will turn 14 on April 27th). From both boys I had received letters before, but when I saw the note on my calender that it was time for their birthday letters I didn't have any idea what to send.

I kept thinking for days before I posted about my problem on OurCompassion. Only a few hours later I was presented with wonderful ideas (thank you to everyone who provided one):

- Jesus in the Temple story (Luke 2:41-52)
- sport playing cards/soccer cards
- sport posters

I also got the suggestion to throw them a party. How? Check out this blog:  
Paper Gifts for Estefany - Birthday Ideas
I promise you will be overwhelmed in a completely positive way with all the ideas provided.

Making the post on OC finally set my brain to work. In the end I didn't use any of those ideas, but as you can see, they are still with me for future birthdays.

I read through the boys letters, looking for any small mentions of the things that they like.

Chistian asked me in one letter to "please send me photos" and Heriberto mentioned that his favorite subject was Math - and with those statements I finally knew what I would send them.

For Chistian I collected photos from Germany - all the major cities, the important rivers, various landscapes... - and put them together in a photo book.

 
Heriberto will receive his very own "puzzle magazine" full of Math related riddles and games. I made sure he had a few topics to choose from and each envelope contained about five games. 

My next Birthday letter on the list was the one for Naydali. She is my youngest correspondence child and the two letters I have received so far overflow with information. Naydali loves animals (especially dogs), loves to watch animals, enjoyes listening to the singing of birds and her favorite colour is pink. In the letters (written by her aunt) it seems like Naydali is easily enthused about everything.

So, from my list of Birthday letters, hers was probably the easiest one; I made her a poster of various animals. I made sure to get a wide range of animals onto the poster. And of course the background of the poster is in pink - I didn't really have a choice there.

The two last letters are for Maryuri (she turns 9 on the 2nd of July) and Nakasumba (turning 12 on June 20th). This time I decided to send them a few stickers, nail stickers, age-appropriate coloring pages and mazes.

As a little special extra I made each of them an envelope book.

This might seem to be a not very thoughtful birthday gift compared to the ones above, but I made sure that they looked far from the usual letters and small gifts I send through out the year.

For both girls I chose a paper folder and turned it into some kind of a lapbook. I cut the folders a little smaller so it would fit the restrictions for sending and added "pockets" to it so I could store away the little gifts I got for them. I used the parts I cut off before as well as an envelope to make them. Before I started adding the gifts I decorated the folders. And here this how the final results looked:

I had fun working on all those birthday gifts and I hope my kids will enjoy them just as much.