Welcome to
An engaging letter exchange experience that builds your child’s confidence as a reader and writer!
What Is Family & Friends?
Family & Friends fosters your child’s love for reading and writing by leveraging their natural desire for caring relationships. By motivating your child to share their curiosity and interests with a loved one, Family & Friends is the perfect way to help them grow into confident and expressive readers and writers.
Getting Your Child Excited about Reading and Writing!
- New, engaging digital magazine content to read each month
- Freedom to choose what and when they want to read
- Authentic support from someone who cares about them
- Easy-to-follow prompts that make letter writing easy and enjoyable
Easy-to-use,
online platform
for engaging reading experiences.
New articles and stories
to choose from
every
month!
A
caring relationship
supports
your child's natural curiosities.
Fun,
on-screen prompts
make letter-writing enjoyable.
How Do I Get Started?
It’s easy as 1-2-3!
1. Decide which magazine pack is best aligned to your child's reading level.
- New digital magazine delivered monthly for your child and their pen pal to read
- Wide variety of content types capture your child’s interest and motivate engagement
- Digital magazines alternate between literary (fiction) and discovery (non-fiction)
SPIDER/ASK Pack
(recommended for ages 8–10)
CRICKET/MUSE Pack
(recommended for ages 11–14)
2. Identify the adult family member or friend you want to connect with your child.
Choose a Caring Adult...
+ Your Child
Hi, [potential pen pal for my child]!
Are you interested in being [my child]’s digital pen pal? There’s a brand-new program (CricketTogether: Family & Friends) that connects kids with a caring adult in their life for correspondence around digital magazine stories and articles. It all works through a kid-friendly website that’s safe and secure. The platform provides letter writing tips and prompts as well as a new digital magazine monthly to give you fun topics to write about with each other.
My child would like YOU to be their pen pal! Not only do I think this program would help keep my child engaged in reading and writing over the next four months, most importantly, it would give them another way to stay connected and to communicate with you.
I will complete the registration and cover the cost as long as you give me the green light that you’re willing to participate! You can find out more at cricketmedia.com/family.
Let me know if you’re interested as soon as possible! Registration for the summer session closes on May 31st. Participation in this session would enable you two to read digital magazines and correspond on the platform from June–September 30.
Thanks for considering supporting us in this way!
Take this great opportunity to grow your child’s self-confidence as a reader and writer this summer. Introductory pricing is only $20 for the entire summer program!
3. Register your child for the 2nd Session Summer 2021 Family & Friends Program (by May 31st)!
The 1st session (May–August) has already begun, but you can now register for the 2nd session!
When?
June–September 2021
Who?
Kids Ages 8–14
How Much?
$20
2nd Session Registration Deadline:
May 31st
Act Fast, Registration closes in:
3. Register your child for the Family & Friends Program!
Registration for our summer sessions of CricketTogether: Family & Friends is closed. If you are interested in being notified when the next registration period opens, please provide your contact information below.
Frequently Asked Questions
Summer Session registration closed on May 31st.
Yes, you can enroll as many children as you like! Simply complete a registration form for each child, and be sure to identify a different caring adult pen pal for each child.
Absolutely. We welcome children of any age. However, the platform is most successfully navigated by children with at least 3rd grade reading and writing skills.
Yes, both struggling and advanced readers will have access to content they find interesting and engaging. Cricket carefully creates each magazine pack so that they offer content covering a wide range of reading abilities.
Our recommendations for each pack:
- SPIDER/ASK for 8–10 year-olds
- CRICKET/MUSE for children ages 11–14 year-olds
These are based on the Lexile® Framework for Reading developed by MetaMetrics, used by all major education publishers in the United States. Our recommendations are for children with reading abilities typical for their age range. If your child has lower or higher reading abilities than their peers, you might consider selecting a pack that offers more accessible or more challenging content.
During the registration process, you will be prompted to enter an email address for the caring adult pen pal you want to correspond with your child. Cricket will take care of the rest. We’ll email the good news to your chosen pen pal, and we’ll get them all set up to correspond with your child!
Family & Friends is built so that children and their caring adult pen pal can read and correspond whenever and wherever they want. Our platform has all the tools to fully support this asynchronous correspondence. Tools for live (i.e., synchronous) communication—such as video chat—are not supported at this time.
Yes! Family & Friends is based on Cricket’s eMentoring Platform, CricketTogether. CricketTogether—a highly-utilized mentoring platform for children under 13 trusted by schools across the country—is already PRIVO sealed for compliancy with all online children’s safety standards, as documented in COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act). Family & Friends is currently undergoing the certification process for COPPA compliance. For more information regarding how Cricket protects your child’s privacy, see our Privacy Policy.
Please reach out to us with any questions or concerns at support@crickettogther.com
