Letters still favoured contact with Santa

They put this Santa postal box out each Christmas time for all those letters that are written to Santa.

-WHITEFIELD- has contributed a photo to this story.

The "world is flat," even for 6 and 7 year-olds! Estelle Quinlan, a teacher
at Christa McAuliffe elementary school in Oceanside, has her 1st and 2nd
grade special education students participating in the project. Global
SchoolNet matched them with their "Santas" which are high school students
from Kansas. With the help of their teacher, the young kids wrote their
letters and emailed them to Santa. Today they received the replies.

Ho ho ho…

Yvonne Maire

To learn more about this project go to
http://www.globalschoolnet.org/gsnsanta/

More Interesting Details:

* Global SchoolNet's mission is to support 21st century learning. We engage
teachers and students in meaningful project learning exchanges with people
around the world to develop literacy and communication skills, foster
teamwork and collaboration, encourage workforce preparedness and create
multi-cultural understanding. We prepare youth for full participation as
productive and effective citizens in an increasing global economy.
http://www.globalschoolnet.org/

* The Letters to Santa writing project pairs classes of K-2 students with
junior and senior high school students; the younger students write letters
to Santa and the older students respond back - as Santa would.

* Teachers are provided with abundant lesson ideas and tips to help students
have a successful... and very authentic... letter writing
experience.

* This project strengthens students' writing. Primary students want their
letter to Santa to be "just right" and secondary students feel such a high
degree of responsibility to the task that they also want their work to be
their best. Students gladly write, edit, revise and perfect their letters.

* Socially, one of the most noteworthy results of this project is the
cooperative mode that the students seem automatically to slide into, as they
want to help each other, to compare what they have written with what others
in the class have done.

www.globalschoolnet.org

Collaborate, communicate & celebrate learning!

yvonnemariea has contributed a photo to this story.

Abigayle is 2 1/2 years old and worked for 10 minutes to "write" this letter to Santa. She read it word for word to us afterward, it says, "I want a pink Barbie Car and Barbie".

paigew1977 has contributed a photo to this story.

I am delighted with the response to this item.

writing to santa was a lot of fun for us; we wouldn't have it any other way.

missemtoo has contributed a photo to this story.

My Mammaw's older sister wrote this for her to send to Santa in 1929.

jessicaem has contributed a photo to this story.

Noah, age 3, wrote this "letter" to Santa Claus. The two stick figures in the lower right are Mommy and Daddy, while the long blue lines up to the top of the page are apparently Noah and his baby brother and sister (twins)! The red lines are backwards "N"s, which is how Noah signed his name. Noah is hoping for a "Ninja Turtle van" this Christmas, which he drew on a separate page of his letter.

sduszynski has contributed a photo to this story.

I am glad that the focus of this story is not on how "new fangled technology" is ruining our world. But rather on the sweet and nostalgic aspects of "old-fashioned" life that we still cherish. I love writing and letters and I am not sad to see it diminish in popularity. I am happy to see it taken up by hobbyists and people who really love it. I know that I will definitely encourage my kids write letters to Santa, no matter how digital the world becomes.

Although it would be fun to see a movie that imagines a kid sending an email to santa and then he uses that for his "list"...

My son Joe and my daughter Jenna each wrote a letter to Santa. Both decided that drawing the wish list as well as writing it out would help Santa understand what they wanted this Christmas. After completing the task my son went even further by addressing an envelope, adding our return address and affixing a stamp. He made sure mommy took it to the mail box on his way to school the next day.

Sharpsburg has contributed a photo to this story.

This letter was the first one my five year old son wrote himself without his sister's help.  Hope they reach to Santa... Merry Christmas!

My daughter Elena (4 and half) wrote this to Santa.

ciz974 has contributed a photo to this story.

This small room in the Santa Claus House in North Pole, AK has its wall covered with letters from kids written to Santa. One could spend half a day here perusing the sweet, innocent and hilarious thoughts and wishes the kids come up with.

sameerjatana has contributed a photo to this story.

These are two letters to Santa from my sister Irene and me. Mine was tipewrited by my mother as I dictated her what I wanted to tell Santa, and... indeed she wrote what I said word-for-word!

My sister's is interesting also because of her terrible spelling, partly because we are bilingual in English and Spanish, though raised in Spain, and therefore we were used to write in Spanish where writing is much more phonetic.

margaritatremblay has contributed a photo to this story.

this is the christmas tree on one of the cafeterias on campus, it grew incredibly popular this year, because it was completely plastered with letters to santa ( yes thats not some very cheap decorations, its hundreds of christmas letters and notes!) with all the classical student letters saying:
dear santa ive been good all year please let me pass ( whichever class you are failing)
dear santa make my teacher ( dissapear, die, cancel the exam )
and not so calssical but yet funny
dear santa dont let my girlfriend back home find out i cheated on her
dear santa give jimmy some new pants bcause he always wears the same ones
dear santa make the cafeteria evacuate those geeks on the back
dear santa i havent been good, but i still want a car and a hundred in all my exams
each one was funnier than the next, some even got creative and included pictures and drawings
so lets not say that college people dont have christmas spirit cuz we do!

the curious wanderer has contributed a photo to this story.

Happy Christmas to everyone who contributed to this item. Your comments were very interesting.

All right Santa - this is what I want!!

valeuro has contributed a photo to this story.

Santa, this is what I want!!

Suzie's Leeter to Santa (Age 4)

Lael in Alabama has contributed a photo to this story.

The test on this post box says "Letters to Santa!" I found it outside the post office in Växjö, Sweden. This is not for greeting cards, since they also have special boxes for that purpose. What they do with the letters, I do not know.

Filip Wessman has contributed a photo to this story.

amey311 has contributed a photo to this story.