Questions to Ask Your Penpal

Press the button for five fun questions to ask a pen pal, then copy those that fit your letter.

What do you hope my letters will tell you about?
How many hours is your day at school or work, and which one feels longest?
What sounds can you hear while you write this letter?
What is your favorite game for two players? Teach me the rules.
How does your evening end: reading, talking, a screen or straight to sleep?

Next step This or that for kids Conversation starters for kids

How it works

These 150 questions to ask your penpal are written to be answered by letter from far away. They run from a first letter, through everyday life, school, food and holidays, to questions for pen pals who have exchanged a few.

Read the full guide

Two or three questions a letter

Press the button for five questions and copy the two or three that fit. The list beside it opens on Any topic: choose For a first letter to begin, and After a few letters once replies have come back. Each of the six topics holds 25 questions.

For a class pen pal project

Under More filters, A class project, grades 2 to 6 keeps 60 questions in plain words, ten in each topic. No question on the page asks for an address, a full name, a school’s name, a phone number, a photo or a birthday.

Tips

Answer each question yourself in the same letter, so your pen pal has something to reply to.

Questions and answers

What are good questions to ask a pen pal?

Ones that only your pen pal can answer and that show you a place: What sounds can you hear while you write this letter? What do people eat at a birthday party where you live? How do people greet each other where you live?

What do you ask a pen pal in a first letter?

Easy things about now: the weather outside the window, the pictures on the stamps, how free hours get spent. For a first letter holds 25 of them. Keep the bigger questions for later letters.

How many questions should one letter have?

Two or three is plenty. A letter is half news and half questions, and each question you ask is one your pen pal has to find room to answer. Save the rest for the next letter.

Which questions do the lists leave out?

Anything that tells a stranger where to find a child: an address, a route, a full name, a school’s name, a phone number, a photo, a birthday. None asks who lives at home or for the name of a pet, a teacher or a street.

All 150 questions

For a first letter 25

At what hour do you feel most awake, and are you writing to me then?
Can you write hello and goodbye for me in every language you know?
Do you write with your left hand or your right, and with a pen or a pencil?
Have you had a pen pal before? What was it like?
How do you like to start a letter: with news, with a question or with a joke?
How do you spend the hours that belong only to you?
How many days did my letter take to reach you? Let us keep count.
If a classmate drew a cartoon of you, what would you be doing in it?
Is it bright, wet, windy or white outside as you write to me?
Is your handwriting neater at the top of a letter or at the bottom?
What animal do you see most often where you live?
What can you see from the place where you write your letters?
What do people from far away always guess wrong about your home town?
What do you hope my letters will tell you about?
What has nobody ever asked you that I should?
What is one thing you are good at, and one thing you are still learning?
What made you smile on the day you wrote this letter?
What made you want a pen pal?
What pictures are on the stamps where you live?
What season is it where you are, and how does it change your day?
What should I tell you about myself in my next letter?
What sounds can you hear while you write this letter?
What time is it where you are when you sit down to write?
What would you like to know about my town first?
Which topic should I ask about if I want a very long letter back?

Everyday life 25

Have you repaired or put together anything lately? Tell me how it went.
How do people greet each other where you live?
How does your evening end: reading, talking, a screen or straight to sleep?
How many layers of clothes do you need to go outside this week?
Is it light or dark when you eat your evening meal this month?
Is there an animal in your life? Tell me one funny thing it does.
Teach me one outdoor game from your neighborhood, step by step.
Tell me one sound, one smell and one color from today.
What do people in your town do on a Saturday morning?
What do you and your friends do when you meet up?
What do you carry in your bag every day?
What do you do on a day when it rains from morning to night?
What do you do while you wait for the mail to come?
What does an ordinary Tuesday look like for you, from waking up to bedtime?
What does your desk or your room look like right now? Describe it or draw it for me.
What does your family do on an evening without electricity?
What is the busiest place in your town, and what makes it so busy?
What is the noisiest time of day where you live?
What kind of shop is nearest to you, and what do you get there?
What wakes you up: a clock, a bird, a person or the light?
What was the best part of yesterday?
Where do you keep the letters you get: in a box, a drawer or between the pages of a book?
Which household task is yours alone, and do you get anything for doing it?
Which household task would you gladly swap with me?
Which plants near you are in leaf, in flower or bare right now?

School or work 25

Do you wear a uniform or special clothes? What do they look like?
How do students where you live celebrate the end of the school year?
How many hours is your day at school or work, and which one feels longest?
How many students are in your class, or how many people work beside you?
If I sat in your chair at school or at work, what would I be looking at?
What are you learning this month that I could try too?
What are you the person to ask about?
What book are you reading, for school or for yourself?
What do you do at recess or on a break?
What do you write on: notebooks, a tablet, a chalkboard?
What does your teacher or your boss say again and again?
What is in your midday meal, and do you bring it or is it made for you?
What is on the wall nearest to you at school or at work?
What is the first lesson of your school day, or the first task of your work day?
What job would you write on a name tag for your future self?
What new word did you learn this week?
What piece of homework or work are you putting off right now?
What project are you proud of?
What rule at your school or your job would surprise me?
What sport, instrument or club fills your time after school or work?
When are your long school holidays, and how many weeks do they last?
Where did your class or your team last go together, and what happened there?
Which language do you study, and can you teach me one sentence?
Which skill did you nearly give up on before it finally worked?
Which subject, or which part of your job, makes the time go fastest?

Food and holidays where you live 25

Can you send me a simple recipe that I could make at home?
How do people near you welcome a new year: with noise, with food, quietly or all three?
On which day does everything shut where you live, and what do people do instead?
What dish does your family make that I have probably never heard of?
What do people eat at a birthday party where you live?
What do people give each other as gifts, and on which days?
What do people sell from stalls or carts in your town?
What do people wear on special days?
What do you drink when it is very hot, and what when it is very cold?
What do you eat when you are in a hurry?
What fruit grows near you, and when is it ripe?
What game is played at parties or on holidays where you live?
What is sold at the market near you that might surprise me?
What is the next holiday on your calendar, and how will you spend it?
What is the sweetest thing people eat where you live?
What is usually on the table for the evening meal at your house?
What meal would you serve to a guest from far away?
What snack do you buy with your own money?
What songs or music go with your favorite holiday?
What was on your plate this morning, and would your neighbors have had the same?
What would a picnic basket from your country have in it?
When your town dresses up for a festival, what goes on the streets and in the windows?
Which day of the year do you count down to, and what happens on it?
Which dish belongs to one older relative, so that nobody else makes it as well?
Which food have you only just learned to enjoy?

Favorites 25

At what time of day are you happiest, and what are you doing then?
How do you like to spend money that you have saved?
Tell me the story of something you watched lately, but leave out the ending.
What do you and your relatives do when everybody is in one place?
What do you collect, and how many do you have so far?
What do you like doing outdoors more than anything else?
What do you like to make with your hands?
What happens on your days off that never happens on the other days?
What is your favorite game for two players? Teach me the rules.
What kind of place do you like best: woods, water, hills or a busy street? Tell me why.
What kind of sky makes you want to go outside at once?
What smell do you like so much that you would put it in an envelope for me?
What story did you love when you were younger, and why?
Which animal would you most like to meet, and does it live anywhere near you?
Which color wins in your bedroom: the walls, the bedcover or the floor?
Which gift from you is still on somebody’s shelf?
Which number is your favorite, and is there a reason?
Which season do you like best, and what can you do in it that you cannot do in the others?
Which song would you put on a tape for me, and why that one?
Which sport gets everyone near you shouting, and how is it played?
Which subject could fill ten pages of a letter from you?
Which tree, bird or flower near you do you like best? Press a leaf for me if you can.
Which word in your language is the most fun to say? Spell it out for me.
Will you draw me the thing you draw most often?
Write me a joke that works where you live, and I will test it here.

After a few letters 25

How do you think your street will have changed by the time we are both old?
What did you find hard this month, and what helped?
What did you imagine about my country before we began writing, and what surprised you?
What did you tell someone else about from one of my letters?
What do you like about writing letters, now that we have exchanged a few?
What do you think the two of us would argue about if we lived next door to each other?
What do you want to learn that nobody has taught you yet?
What does a person have to do to be called a real friend where you live?
What friendly argument between you and your friends never ends?
What have you changed your mind about?
What have you done quietly that deserves a letter of its own?
What have you heard about my country that you want me to confirm or correct?
What is coming up that you will write to me about afterward?
What is different in your days since our letters began?
What should we both try this month, and then compare in our next letters?
What would a visitor do for one day in your town, from breakfast to dark?
What would you put in a small box to show me your life?
When did you do something that scared you, and how did it turn out?
Where does your mind go when a lesson or a meeting is slow?
Which bad day ended up teaching you a good trick?
Which custom from your home will you carry on when you have a home of your own?
Which day of this year would you keep in a jar?
Which of my questions should I ask again in a year?
Which piece of advice do you keep hearing and are starting to believe?
Which place in the world do you hope to see one day, and what would you write to me from there?

How this list was compiled

Written by the Game Night Generator editors on 2026-10-03 as questions to put in a letter to a pen pal: 150, in six groups of 25, ordered by how many letters have gone back and forth. Every question is our own wording. Sixty are marked for a class pen pal project in grades 2 to 6. Children write these letters, so no question asks for an address, a full name, the name of a school, a phone number, a photograph, a birthday or an age, and none asks who lives at home or for the name of a pet, a teacher, a street or a birthplace. Several of those are also common account security questions: see the Better Business Bureau alert on social media quizzes (https://www.bbb.org/article/news-releases/16992-bbb-tip-think-twice-before-taking-that-facebook-quiz) and the OWASP cheat sheet on security questions (https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Choosing_and_Using_Security_Questions_Cheat_Sheet.html), both read on 2026-10-03. No question asks for a map or a route, where a child goes alone or at what time a child is in a given place. Compared by script on 2026-10-03 with every other question list on this site: no question is repeated. Licence: own work