2011 Holiday Card Exchange

Each year Jen, from Projects by Jen, hosts a Holiday Card Exchange. This is our 3rd year participating in this project.

This project was open to all PreK-6th grade classes around the world. Classes were teamed with 29 other classes (we ended up with 31 altogether - 30 to mail out) to exchange cards.

Everyone was sent a document with all the names and addresses of the classes in their group and we had to mail one card to each one on our list. We have received 29 cards so far.

The theme this year was snowmen. The boys didn't care for the card templates so we ended up designing one of our own on the computer and added our school information right to the card. They then signed their name to each card. We made our own envelopes this year too. That's a bit more work than I want to get into next year! :) I addressed them and the boys put the stamps and return address labels on.

Here is a picture of the front of our card. The boys picked out what snowman we used.

Here is the school information that each card was to have in it ...

This was the message the boys picked out and where they signed their names. Since we just learned cursive writing I told them to write in cursive, but they started off with print and that happened to be the card I grabbed to take a picture of. :)

Here are some pictures of the cards we received ...

Last year we hung up a map of the United States and we took a piece of yarn and strung it from the card to the place it came from. This year we're doing world geography so they were just hung up on the same wall as that map. :)

Here are a few close ups of different cards.

All in all it was fun. The boys have been excited about all the mail they've been getting! :) They have to read them to me then find a place on the wall to hang them up. We'll certainly do it again next year.

Here is a list of schools we exchanged cards with this year:

1. Lincoln Elementary; Lincoln, AL
2. Senator Buchanan Elementary School; Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada - this is the only one we haven't received yet ... but I'm guessing that it takes longer to get here from Canada :)
3. Hampton Elementary; Hampton, AR
4. Legend Springs; Glendale, AZ
5. CCM; Murrieta, CA
6. San Lauren Elementary; Bakersfield, CA
7. Flagstaff Academy Charter School; Longmont, CO
8. The Independence School; Newark, DE
9. Wolf Lafe Elementary; Apopka, FL
10. Sweet Apple Elementary; Roswell, GA
11. Kula Elementary; Kula, HI
12. Cardinal Elementary; Eldon, IA
13. St. Joseph Wilmette; Wilmette, IL
14. South Adams; Berne, IN
15. Jefferson West Elementary; Meriden, KS
16. Walter Samuel Academy; Flatwoods, KY  -  this is us so we didn't send ourselves a card ;)
17. Estelle Elementary; Marrero, LA
18. West Elementary; Plymouth, MA
19. Lakeland; Baltimore, MD
20. James H. Bean; Sidney, ME
21. Michener Elementary; Adrian, MI
22. McKinley Elementary; Owatonna, MN
23. Branson Elementary; Branson, MO
24. Oak Grove Lower Elementary; Hattiesburg, MS
25. Highland Park; Havre, MT
26. Rutherfordton Elementary; Rutherfordton, NC
27. Isenberg Elementary; Salisbury, NC
28. Eustace Intermediate School; Eustace, TX
29. Tess Corners Elementary; Muskego, WI
30. Community Learning Center; Neenah, WI
31. Madison Elementary; Madison, SD

We have really enjoyed all the cards this year (and the ones from past years too). This is a super fun project to do with the kids!