Celebrate New Year's with a Time Capsule!

We’ve all seen the movies where a group of kids dig up a mysterious box only to find treasures from the past inside. Wouldn’t your third grader love to tell future generations of kids what it was like to live in 2008? In the process, she will form a concrete understanding of what it means to set a purpose and consider the audience--two common language arts goals that can seem somewhat vague to students. Ask your third grader to reflect on the year 2008, gather her cool stuff and create a time capsule. Don’t worry - she won’t lose any of her valuable treasures in this activity. Instead, she’ll gain some valuable writing tools!

What You Need:

• Shoe box
• Construction paper
• Glue stick
• Markers
• Magazines

What You Do:

1. Explain the time capsule project to your child: one hundred years from now, third graders will want to know what it was like to be in this grade "back then." Your child can send a message to these kids of the future by creating a time capsule in which she describes all the things third graders love to do!

2. The next step is to gather the items for the time capsule. Your child should make a list of favorite activities, hobbies, sports, friends, school subjects, technology, etc… Then she should use magazine clippings, photos or drawings that represent her favorite things. Glue each picture onto construction paper and cut it out to make a border. Next to the picture, your child should write a 2-3 sentence description of the picture, what it represents and why it’s important to her.
3. Remind your child that the purpose of her writing is to let future generations know what today's third graders like to do. Even if she writes about unique activities that are important to her (for example, playing the clarinet), encourage her to include activities and items that many third graders enjoy.
4. Remember, of course: life may be very different for students a hundred years hence, and they may have never seen any of the items in the time capsule. They should keep the audience in mind and write detailed descriptions of the items. Encourage your child to include newspaper clippings about current world, national and local events. Who was president of the United States this year? What were the hottest baseball and football teams? What's the latest technology for kids and for adults? What two problems do people around your community worry about the most? What are five popular foods, and how much does it cost to buy them at a restaurant?
5. The final step is to bury the time capsule! Help your child pick a spot in the yard or the garden and “plant” her time capsule. Explain that in one hundred years, your backyard might be a park and kids digging in the sandbox will be thrilled to discover a treasure from the past!

Note: If the ground is frozen where you live, keep the time capsule and bury it in the spring.