Letter Writing Unit

We completed our letter writing unit awhile ago and I am just now getting everything organized to share with you!  We usually focus on friendly letters and thank-you letters.  We started the unit writing a letter whole group on the whiteboard and talked about the different parts of a letter.  We have morning message everyday in the form of a letter so they are pretty familiar.  
The next day I wrote six letters that were all similar, but also different.  I cut apart the different parts of the letters; date, greeting, body, closing, and signature, to where I had one piece for each kid.  Then they had to find people who would complete their letter.  The good part is there really is no wrong answer, except having two dates, two closings, etc.  The kids got together and glued the letters back together and labeled the parts.

Because this happened just after spring break, my letters to them were mostly about what I did over the break.  So for their first friendly letter I had them write me back.  They were mostly excited to be able to use my first name!

After they wrote letters to me we talked about thank-you letters and things that we are thankful for.  We wrote a thank-you letter together and then we listed all the support staff in our school.  The kids each chose someone to write a thank-you letter to.  I didn't grab any pictures of them - - sorry!

To culminate we wrote a thank-you letter to our parents and mailed it from the school to their house.  Seeing the kids adorable, first grade handwriting on the envelopes was sooo cute!!  They loved sending mail from school.

We also wrote a friendly letter to another first grade class in Florida and was hoping they would send one back, but have yet to here from them.  One more week till school is out...maybe we will still get one.

Here is an INCREDIBLE resource where all my FREE letter writing printables came from!  

Thank you Jillian Starr at The Starr Spangled Planner!