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Subscribe by December 25th to receive our January letters all about COURAGE! The perfect way to head into 2025 with confidence! 📮
Magical Monthly Mail
to make your child smile!
Treat your child to our colourful and positive letters from "The Goodfellows" and nurture a resilient growth mindset and mental wellbeing.
Join the Adventure!
The Goodfellows Letter Service delivers the unique joy of a physical letter, straight to your child’s letterbox! 📩 🌟
Our 12 monthly letters have been thoughtfully interwoven with positive psychology and social-emotional learning concepts, such as adopting a growth mindset, resilience, relationships, emotional awareness, gratitude, connection to nature and so much more! Each letter is also packed full of fun activities to help nurture these positive habits. 🙌
What better way to spend time with your child, than by learning about the things in life that matter most! ❤️
“The Garden letters have been such a delight to receive! My kids (3 and 6) really love the beautiful illustrations and the characters in the stories and poem. The activities are very thoughtful and nature-based, which we love. It’s nice to have a reminder for the whole family to practice gratitude and reflect on other important topics.”
Jess, Melbourne Australia
“I go to a Steiner school where poems are a big part, so I really liked the poem in the Forest letter! I thought the jokes were very good and I think the way lessons were included in the stories was great. I also very much enjoyed seeing all the "mushlings" hopping around!”
Marcel, 11yrs, Sydney Australia
Who Are The Goodfellows?
“The Goodfellows” are kind-hearted magical folk who live throughout our natural world, and they’ve decided to start writing letters to children, to help them connect with nature and live happier and more fulfilling lives 🌿 🙏
Inspired by “the good people” in Irish folklore, The Goodfellows include all manner of magical creatures, such as fauns, elves, fairies, gnomes, forest spirits, and cheeky little mushlings! 🍄
We think everyone will enjoy our lovable Goodfellows (even if they're too big to really believe in them!)
Why Choose Us?
🙌 100% money back guarantee
😊 100% make-your-child-smile guarantee
🌿 A whole year of screen-free family fun and magical memories
🌟 Evidence-based concepts embedded into 12 engaging monthly letters
🙏 Nurture a resilient growth mindset and mental wellbeing
❤️ Lay the foundations for long-term happiness
Learn more about the benefits of our letters HERE
Growth Garden Letters
(5-7yrs)
Meet Rosie and Gully, two "local" garden gnomes, and hear all about their recent adventures in the garden and the lessons they learn from their wise great grandparents; Merry Berry and Happy Pappy.
AUD$18/month
USD$12.50/month
Growth Forest Letters
(8-10yrs)
Meet Puck the faun and hear all about his recent adventures in the forest and the wise forest spirits he encounters along the way.
AUD$18/month
USD$12.50/month
What's In Our Letters?
📄 An illustrated 2-page letter from The Goodfellows.
🌿 An illustrated positive nature poem.
🌸 A positive affirmation colouring bookmark.
🙏 A recurring gratitude jar activity.
🍁 Two different nature-based activities for outdoor play.
🌜 A bedtime fable (Garden letters only).
💬 Some fun conversation and "Who am I" questions (Forest letters only).
🤣 And a few "dad" jokes, for laughter is the best medicine!
Our Money-Back Guarantee
Feel the magic, or it's FREE!
The purpose of our business is to spread joy and happiness to children and their families 💕
If your child doesn’t love their first letter, simply let us know within 1 week of receiving it and we will happily offer you a 100% refund, or cancel at any time. For more info, read our FAQs HERE.
How Does It Work?
Sign up your child
At checkout you can sign up multiple children to receive a letter each, or simply add multiple names onto 1 envelope. You will be billed monthly, and sent a monthly letter.
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Wait for your letters to arrive in the post!
We mail out our letters from Australia on the 1st of every month. Keep a look out for our bright yellow envelopes in your letterbox!
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Enjoy the journey
You can read our letters to your child, or have them read it to you, then get creative with our nature activities on the weekend.
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Collect all our letters and read them
again and again
Write Back To Us
We LOVE receiving letters!
We love to hear about what our young readers are getting up to out in nature, or learning about in our letters. ❤️ We include a short reply note inside their next letter, as well as a post of their letter on social media. For more info about writing to us, click HERE.
FAQs
Sign up your child!
Sign up multiple children to receive either our Garden or Forest letters during checkout, or simply add multiple children's names onto 1 envelope.
Wait for your letters to arrive in the post!
We mail out our letters from Australia on the 1st of every month. Keep a look out for our bright yellow envelopes in your letterbox!
Enjoy the journey!
You can read our letters to your child, or have them read it to you. Then get creative with our outdoor nature activities on the weekend.
Collect all our letters and read them again and again!
When you hit Subscribe Now on any of our product pages you will be prompted to select how many monthly letters you would like to receive, depending on how many children you'd like to sign up. Then you will fill out all their individual details prior to checkout. This means each child receives their own letter and activities. An automatic discount is applied for purchasing multiple subscriptions: 10% off for 2 letters, or 15% off for three letters.
Alternatively, you can simply sign up for a single monthly letter, and include all your children's names on the one envelope by adding them all to the “name” field prior to checkout (e.g. “Jane, Julie and Jimmy Smith”). Please note, due to letter size restrictions, we can only send 1 extra bookmark per letter.
The purpose of our business is to spread joy and happiness to children and their families. The last thing we want is for anyone to feel disapppointed or out of pocket!
If your child doesn’t love their first letter, simply let us know within 1 week of receiving it and we will happily offer you a 100% refund. We can also switch them to a different subscription (Garden/Forest), or cancel their subscription at any time.
Switch
If you would like to switch letter services, take a look at our other letter service on offer (Garden or Forest) and see if this might be a better fit for your child. Sometimes the recommended age level isn’t right for every child, so switching to our other letter service might be an option. If you would like to switch, simply email us at hello@thegoodfellowsletterservice.com and let us know.
Cancel
If you would like to cancel your monthly subscription at any time, simply email us at hello@thegoodfellowsletterservice.com. Please do so prior to the 20th of the month, which is our billing date, if you do not wish to receive your next letter. You can also log into your Account that was setup during checkout, and click "Cancel Subscription" under the "Subscriptions" tab. If you would like to cancel a prepaid annual subscription, please note that you will only be refunded for the remaining amount of letters that you will not receive. If you cancel when your next letter has just been posted out, this letter will not be refunded e.g. if you cancel after 4 months, but we have just posted your fifth letter, then you will be refunded for 7 months (12mths – 5mths).
Refund
If your child doesn’t love their first letter, let us know within 1 week of receiving it by emailing us at hello@thegoodfellowsletterservice.com, and we will be happy to offer you a 100% refund. This includes monthly and prepaid annual subscriptions.
Children are always thrilled to receive their own personal letters in the mail! Our beautifully illustrated letters make very special gifts, especially from a grandparent with their own life lessons to share ❤️ Our letters are also a great way to connect with your grandchild if you live far away, and the perfect excuse to Facetime for a chat when their letter arrives.
We have 2 options available for gifting our letters:
Option 1: Gift a subscription
Subscribe to any of our letters (Garden, Forest or Digital) and click "Buying this as a gift?" during checkout. This will enable you to input a recipient email address and gift message, choose a duration of monthly letters you'd like to gift, and select a future start date if you'd like to. We also email you a gift certificate after purchase, which you can print off and pop inside a card.
Furthermore, we also offer digital letters at checkout for anyone subscribing to our physical letters, so you can follow along with each letter yourself! We email out our digital letters on the 1st of every month, the same day we mail our physical letters. So, you will have plenty of time to read the letter, while you wait for your grandchild to get theirs in the post!
Option 2: Buy a Gift Voucher
We also offer gift vouchers, available HERE, if this is easier. You can purchase either a AUD$50 or AUD$100 voucher, both with a 12 month expiry period. After purchase, you will be emailed a Voucher Code. You can write this on one of our printable gift vouchers if you'd like to include it in a card, or simply forward the Voucher Code on to the child's parents via email. You can also choose to have the Voucher Code emailed directly to the child's parents during checkout instead.
Click HERE to view our printable Gift Certificates and Gift Vouchers.
Happy gifting! 🙌
We sure do! We are based in Australia, but we offer FREE postage worldwide, no matter where you live!
Rest assured, there are no extra shipping costs, fees or taxes added to your subscription prices at checkout. Please be mindful of the time it may take for your first letter to reach you from Australia. For more detailed information about postage estimates, please see below.
We use Australia Post to post our letters, and our letters are posted the old-fashioned way—with a stamp! This means they cannot be tracked, so we can only give estimations of shipping times based on your location.
For Australian subscribers, you can expect to receive your first letter 1-2 weeks after your first posting date, then every month (4-5 weeks) after you receive your first letter. For international subscribers, please allow 3-5 weeks after your first posting date, then every month after you receive your first letter.
Postage time estimates:
- Within Australia: 6-7 business days
- New Zealand: 15+ business days
- USA/Canada: 15+ business days
- UK/Europe: 15+ business days
- Asia/Pacific: 15+ business days
- Rest of World: 25+ business days
Please allow more time on top of these estimates if you live in a remote rural area, as these estimations are for major metropolitan areas.
All of our letters are posted out from Australia on the 1st of every month (AEST). Occasionally the 1st of the month falls on a weekend or public holiday in Australia, so in these cases our letters will be posted on the next available business day.
Our posting dates for 2025 (AEST) are:
2nd January (Thursday), 3rd February (Monday), 3rd March (Monday), 1st April (Tuesday), 1st May (Thursday), 2nd June (Monday), 1st July (Tuesday), 1st August (Friday), 1st September (Monday), 1st October (Wednesday), 3rd November (Monday), 1st December (Monday)
Please note that we require some time prior to our posting dates to prepare all our letters. Our cut-off date to be included in the next mail out is the 25th of every month. This means if you sign up on January 26th, you will automatically be deferred until our March mail out. This means that the waiting period from the date you sign up, to when you receive your first letter, could be up to 6 weeks (if you live in Australia) or up to 8 weeks if you live internationally or in a remote location. After this initial wait however, you should expect to see your monthly letters arrive around every 4-5 weeks.
If you feel unsure about where your letter is, and you fear it may have got lost along the way, please reach out at hello@thegoodfellowsletterservice.com and we will investigate it for you. In instances where we believe your letter has got lost, we will post a replacement immediately, free of charge.
If your letter is taking a very long time to get to you and you feel it may have got lost along the way, please reach out at hello@thegoodfellowsletterservice.com and we will investigate your postage times for you. Rest assured, if we suspect it has been lost, we will post a replacement letter immediately, free of charge.
When you sign up to one of our letter subscriptions (Garden, Forest or Digital), you will be billed at checkout for your first letter, but all future renewals will be billed on the 20th of every month until your subscription auto-expires after 12 payments in total (12 monthly letters). If you wish to cancel your subscription, please do so prior to the 20th of the month, if you do not wish to receive your next letter.
If you select "Buying this as a gift?" during checkout, then you will NOT be billed at checkout for your first letter, unless you happen to be going through checkout on the 20th of the month. Rather, your first billing date will be the 20th of the month you chose to start your subscription, or the 20th of the current month if you didn't choose a future start date. If you chose a future start date for your letters at checkout, whether it is a gift or not, then you won't be billed until this date. If you prepaid for an annual subscription, then you will pay in full at checkout, as this is a one-off payment.
Cut-off Dates:
Our cut-off date for new subscribers is the 25th of the previous month, to give us time to prepare our letters for posting on the 1st of the following month. If you subscribe after the 25th (e.g. on the 26th March), your first letter will be deferred to the 1st of the following month, approximately 5 weeks away (1st May). Please note, you will be billed for your first letter at checkout (on 26th March), but your first renewal won’t be until 20th May, as you have already paid for your first letter on 1st May. After this, you can expect to be billed on the 20th of every month, prior to your next letter being mailed on 1st, for up to a maximum of 12 months, when your subscription will auto-expire.
Vouchers:
If you use a voucher to purchase one of our subscriptions, your ongoing monthly bill will automatically withdraw from any remaining funds on your voucher, until it is all used up. This is why we always collect your payment details at checkout for subscriptions, even when the voucher covers the cost of your first monthly payment.
Account Management:
We automatically setup an Account for you during checkout. To login to your Account, click the account icon in the top right corner of our website, then input your email and password (or select “one-time-password” if you have forgotten it).
When you log in, you can view your next payment and all previous invoices. You can also update your personal details (email, billing details, shipping address). Please note, updating your shipping address in your Account simply changes your personal address linked to your billing account, and will not alert us to your child’s new postal address for their letters. If you need to change your child’s postal address details, or their custom name and room description on the front of their envelope, please reach out at hello@thegoodfellowsletterservice.com and we will do that for you.
Yes you can! If you would like the start date of your child's first letter to be a after a special occasion, such as their birthday, simply select "Buying as a gift?" during checkout, and select a future start date. Please note that this only allows you to choose a start date up to 3 months ahead of schedule.
If your subscription is not being bought as a gift, but you'd like to defer your start date anyway, simply fill in your own email address and details in the gift recipient fields.
Please note, your subscription start date, and first billing date, will be the start date you choose under gifting. So you will NOT pay anything during checkout (though we will still collect your payment details for future billing).
In the introduction brochure that your child receives with their first letter, we suggest that they leave any reply letters outside their back door overnight, so The Goodfellows can come and collect it.
This of course requires YOU to do the collecting after they have gone to bed, and post it off in secret when you can! (Alternatively, keep it with their memorabilia). This can be a bit of fun if your child believes in The Goodfellows, otherwise, you can simply post their reply letters together instead.
We love to receive letter replies from children! However, we do not reply to children’s letters personally — all the letters your child receives are identical to every other child subscribed.
However, we do post pictures of our favourite replies on Instagram and Facebook, so don’t forget to follow us and show your child if their letter pops up! We write a short response from The Goodfellows to any letter we post, so you can share that with your child if their letter is featured.
Our return address is on the back of all our envelopes, or see below:
The Goodfellows Letter Service
PO Box 12
Fairy Meadow
NSW, Australia, 2519
The Growth Garden letters are for children around 5-7 years old. The letters are shorter and simpler, perfect for children just learning to read. They also receive a short nature poem and a bedtime fable, both in theme with that month’s letter. The Garden characters are a family of “local garden gnomes”, featuring two young gnomes, Rosie and Gully, who write letters to your child. Rosie and Gully talk about their recent adventures in the garden and the positive lessons they have learned. For more information about our Growth Garden letters, click HERE.
The Growth Forest letters are for children around 8-10 years old. The letters and activities are more advanced than our Garden letters. The Forest characters include Puck the faun, who writes letters to your child. Puck writes about his recent adventures in the forest and the positive lessons he has learned. Puck receives guidance from his fairy mentor, Glimmer, and the wise forest spirits, who help him navigate important challenges. Your child will also receive a list of conversation questions and a short personality tick list, to help encourage self-discovery and self-awareness, reflection and family discussions. For more information about our Growth Forest letters, click HERE.
Both our Garden and Forest letters follow the same lesson topics each month. This way siblings who are subscribed to both the Garden or Forest letters will be learning about the same concepts each month, but using different characters and more age-appropriate stories. For more information about the different themes explored in each monthly letter, click HERE.
We only provide the written instructions for each nature-based activity, but most of the materials required will be items collected from nature, or common house-hold materials (e.g. glue, paper, scissors, string, paints or recycled materials such as glass jars or toilet rolls).
A couple of activities recommend the use of clay, which we hope is easy to find at a local stationery or craft store (or even better, try and find some on a nature walk!).
Positive psychology is a field of psychology that emphasises the pursuit of mental wellbeing, beyond simply the absence of mental illness. It is the study of how strengths, habits, mindsets and beliefs contribute to a happier and more fulfilling life, and what factors enable individuals to thrive.
Some of the key techniques of positive psychology include: adopting a regular gratitude and mindfulness practice, refocusing on our strengths vs weaknesses, cultivating resilience and grit in the face of setbacks, fostering a positive growth mindset and more optimistic attitude, improving empathy and emotional intelligence, and strengthening feelings of connection to nature.
The long-term benefits of positive psychology practices include improved mental and physical health, improved productivity and positive outcomes in our pursuits, and healthier relationships throughout our lives.
A growth mindset is the belief that your abilities can be developed through persistence and hard work. It is a very simple concept, yet so many of us don’t really believe this about ourselves, or recognise the degree to which this impacts our attitude to various situations.
Individuals with a more ‘fixed mindset’, tend to believe that they are born with set abilities, and are not capable of getting significantly better at the things they struggle with. While some genetic ceilings and limitations exist in our unique abilities, these ceilings often sit much higher than we assume. Individuals with a more ‘fixed mindset’, can have a deep fear of failure, as mistakes or setbacks threaten their sense of self-worth, and their more rigid beliefs about what they can (or can’t) do. This can lead to hypersensitivity to failure or criticism, lower self-esteem and motivation, anxiety, defeatism, negative self-talk, avoidance behaviours, and ultimately, missed opportunities in life.
Having a growth mindset is having the healthy perspective that no matter your starting point or individual challenges in life, personal growth and development are always possible with patience, persistence and hard work. It is this positive mindset and sense of self-efficacy that helps foster resilience in the face of setbacks and challenges, a more optimistic outlook on life, improved self-kindness and positive self-talk, and increased empathy for others and their different personal challenges.
Nurturing a growth mindset from a young age is a great way to support long-term mental wellbeing, and the most important place for children to be encouraged to adopt these beliefs, is within the home, from their primary care-givers. Our letters are spaced throughout the year, to give parents regular opportunities to chat about and reinforce the concepts covered in our letters.
Our letters have been designed to help nurture a growth mindset in your child, by encouraging your child to:
- Be resilient in the face of setbacks and negative experiences 💪
- See challenges as opportunities to grow, rather than obstacles to avoid 🌱
- See mistakes as a normal part of life and the learning process 📈
- Understand that progress is not a linear path, but full of setbacks and obstacles 🛠️
- Believe that their abilities can always be improved with patience, practice, and persistence 🚴
- See perseverance and hard work as key factors to achieving any goal they have in life 🏆
- Feel unafraid to fail or ask for help, and unafraid to try new things ✋
- Believe that asking for help is a strength, not a weakness 🌻
- Develop a secure sense of self and a healthy self-esteem 🌟
- Become less focused on competing or comparing themselves to others 😎
- Develop the adaptability and problem-solving strategies needed to prosper in our rapidly changing world 💡
We want all children to benefit from our letters, not just those who can afford it. If you're in this situation, please reach out to us via email and we'll see what we can do with either a discounted price or digital option. ❤️
Out of our letter contents, the letters themselves, the introductory brochures and the colouring bookmarks are all printed on 100% recycled paper. All our coloured paper materials (including our envelopes) are 100% FSC certified and sourced from responsibly managed forests. We buy all our materials from local suppliers, here in Australia. Our letters are almost 100% recyclable (excluding the postage stamp, address label and stickers). However, we hope your child wants to hold onto their letters, instead of recycling them ❤️
While everything is moving increasingly online, we felt that the physical nature of our letters was very important. Not only does a physical letter foster excitement and engagement, but it also significantly aids learning and memory when we read from a physical page, rather than a screen. We also wanted our letters to be something that children could keep and easily refer back to over time, without getting lost or forgotten in a digital format.
Rest assured, we are always striving to improve the sustainability of our business, and we are very conscious of the materials we choose.
About Us
Hi, my name's Ellie! 👋
I have a background as an Painter and Fine Art Conservator, and my husband, Sam, is a Psychology Lecturer who researches the positive impact of connection to nature on mental wellbeing. We live in the beautiful beachside town of Wollongong, Australia, and we love spending time out in nature with our two boys.
Since becoming a mother, I've taken up illustration and writing positive poetry and stories for children, which has gradually evolved into The Goodfellows Letter Service. I wanted each letter to nurture different positive psychology and social-emotional learning concepts, so that I would have a fun way to introduce these ideas to my own children and support their mental wellbeing from a young age.
I poured a lot of love into writing and illustrating each of these letters, and I can’t wait to share them with our boys when they are older! For now, I hope they spread some joy to you and your family. ❤️
Ellie x
"Their mind is a garden.
Their thoughts are the seeds.
The harvest can either be flowers or weeds."
William Wordsworth
