You’ve Got Mail … and a Journal

If your family is like ours, helping your children become interested in journal writing can be a challenge. We used to have family home evenings about the importance of keeping a journal, but our initial enthusiasm usually faded quickly. Then we discovered an easy, exciting way to help our family better record life events: e-mail journals.

Originally we opened e-mail accounts (many are free) for each of our children to encourage weekly correspondence with extended family living across the country. Every week they wrote about the interesting, happy, and sad events they had experienced. My husband and I soon realized that these e-mails contained some of our children’s best journal material. We saved and printed any e-mails of interest, then compiled them in a three-ring binder for each child.

We have benefited greatly from keeping e-mail journals. Not only have our children become acquainted with long-distance relatives, but they have also become more motivated to write, thus improving their writing skills. And our younger children participate, too, because we simply type what they want to say! The whole family has been enthusiastic about keeping e-mail journals, and it is an easy way to preserve our day-to-day thoughts and correspondence with loved ones.—Anastasia Kneeland, North Highlands Second Ward, Sacramento California Antelope Stake