Kenyan Penpals

Back in December, our teacher told us that she had found a class in Nairobi, Kenya who wanted to be penpals with us.  Our penpals go to Bensesa School and we enjoyed looking at their website to see pictures of them and their school. 

Eagerly, we wrote our first letter to them.  In it, we introduced ourselves, told a little bit about our school and asked some questions.  Here are a couple of letters:

We also included some hand drawn illustrations to go with our letters -- like this:

Our teacher then mailed them off and the wait began...
It took a very long time for us to receive anything in return, but one day in March, an envelope from Kenya arrived...

In it, we found letters for all of us!  They told us more about themselves, their school and what their life is like.  Some of them also included illustrations.  We loved reading their letters!

We were surprised by some of the things about their letters -- the paper was very thin, their printing is a little different than ours, their school is made of iron sheets and their class has 40 students.

Our teacher decided that we weren't going to write a normal letter back to them.  Instead, she taught us about timelines by reading "Timelines, Timelines, Timelines" by Kelly Boswell.

Photo Credit: Amazon

 

We created a timeline called "A Day in the Life of..." in which we shared what a school day (from the time we get up, to the time we go to bed) is like.  We also didn't write it on a normal piece of paper...instead we used adding machine tape.  Here you can see some of us working on them:

 

Finally, we illustrated them and will include a photograph of ourselves.  Here are some finished products:

 

And now, the wait begins again...hopefully it doesn't take them too long to respond!

 

We were wondering...

Have you ever written to a penpal in another country?

What would you want to tell kids in another country about yourself or where you live?