Grandparent Unit Study
Grandparents are an important part of a child’s life. When children spend time with their grandparents, they learn respect for those who are older, and also learn about history as real events that happened to real people. Learning about grandparents helps children to feel connected to their families. Even if children do not have living grandparents, it can benefit them to learn about their grandparents. Following are some ideas for incorporating a grandparent unit into your homeschool curriculum.
1. Have children interview their grandparents using a tape recorder or email. Plan the questions carefully, but encourage children to also carry out a conversation with their grandparents as they discuss the topics.
2. Help children create a timeline of their grandparents’ lives. Then add into the timeline historical events that occurred during that lifetime. Be sure to include presidents, inventions, popular literature and other interesting events relating to everyday life. Search the internet for photos of the fashions, celebrities, and events to add to your timelines. If grandparents are available, let them tell the children how they remember these events and how they were influenced by them.
3. Read The Hundred Penny Box by Sharon Bell Mathis. Create a similar project like this for your child.
4. Have children interview grandparents about the differences between being a parent and a grandparent. Then let them write about the kind of grandparent they plan to be.
5. Reads books together on grandparents. Talk about all the kinds of grandparents there are and how having different types of grandparents affects a child.
6. Ask your child’s grandparents to teach your child a skill that you don’t know how to do.
7. Let children survey grandparents to see how many grandchildren they have. They can graph the answers and also calculate to find an average.
8. Create a genealogy with your child. Let them interview their grandparents to find the names of ancestors. Then let them label people with the correct relationship-great-grandmother, great-great grandmother and so on. See how many greats they can add to a title by the end of one year of work. For a free downloadable genealogy program and a tutorial, go to FamilySearch.org