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There is much more to explore in our calendar. Find other important events in literary history, authors' birthdays, and a variety of holidays, each with related lessons and resources.
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Home › Classroom Resources › Calendar Activities
September 09
Today is National Grandparents Day.
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| Grades | K – 12 |
| Calendar Activity Type | Holiday & School Celebration |
National Grandparents Day, first proposed in 1970, was officially proclaimed in 1978. This holiday occurs the first Sunday after Labor Day, and is intended not only to honor grandparents, but to remind young people of the "strength, information and guidance older people can offer." What a nice topic to start off the school year!
Help students learn about their personal and community histories through interviews with their grandparents or other elderly community members. See the ReadWriteThink video Helping a Teen Plan and Conduct an Interview for tips and suggestions. Students can use what they learn to create a presentation honoring the person they interviewed. Presentation ideas include:
- Writing acrostic or biographical poems about their grandparents. See the ReadWriteThink lesson plan Acrostic Poems: All About Me and My Favorite Things for additional resources on writing personal poems or use the Acrostic Poems interactive.
- Working with a grandparent to create a scrapbook of their family/community history.
- Working with older family members to create a family tree.
More ideas are available on this page from the National Grandparents Day website. Students can illustrate their poems on paper or publish their work using the ReadWriteThink Printing Press or Stapleless Book
- Grandbuddies
Grandbuddies is an intergenerational project created by Pattie Knox, an online museum educator for the Franklin Institute. Students in her school district participated in aging-simulation activities designed to help them understand the aging process. Visitors can view a case study of this experience and learn how they can replicate the project.
- Great Books about Grandparents
Reading Rockets offers this annotated list of books featuring grandparents, appropriate for children ages 0-9.
- National Grandparents Day
Have students read about the history of this holiday, join a contest, and explore the activities and resources on this site.
- Grandmother and Me
This is an online Kidlink book in many languages. The content was created by students for students. A beautiful tribute to grandmothers around the world!
Grades K – 2 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Family Ties: Making Connections to Improve Reading Comprehension
Families are all about connections between people. In this book, students read three books about different families and make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections to those texts.
Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Unit
Exploring and Sharing Family Stories
Writing gets personal when students interview family members in order to write a personal narrative about that person.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Unit
Family Memoir: Getting Acquainted With Generations Before Us
Creating a memoir of an older family member allows students both to learn more about their own backgrounds and to learn the power of storytellers.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Creating Family Timelines: Graphing Family Memories and Significant Events
Students interview family members, and then create graphic family timelines based on important and memorable family events.
