"What Was Your Favorite Toy Grandma?":
Ask questions to learn about others' favorite toys, dolls or games from long ago.

Related Curriculum Framework Benchmarks for Michigan Teachers

Objectives:

• Learn about the past from people who lived and played in the past.
  
  
• Gather, organize and analyze information about other people's childhoods.
  
  
• Compare and contrast their childhood with those of children from the past.
  
  

• Newsprint and markers.

• Invite students to generate a list of their favorite toys, games and dolls. Record the current year and all of the students' suggestions on blackboard or newsprint.
  
  
• Encourage students to organize their list into categories such as: board games, card games, outdoor toys, outdoor games, indoor toys, indoor games, etc.
  
  
• Using these categories ask students to pick three categories and collect either orally or on paper the favorites of an older person they know. Students should also try to find out whether these were toys that were played with in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, etc.
  
  
• Ask students to develop a written or oral report on whom they spoke with and the favorite toys, games or dolls from that person's childhood.
  
  
• Produce new lists of favorite toys, dolls and games for different time periods based on the information the students collected. Initiate discussion with students by asking the following questions:
  
  • In what ways have children's toys and games stayed the same?
    
  • In what ways have they changed?
    
  • What do you think you might have liked about being a child in the past?
    
  • What do you think the person you spoke with would have liked about being a child today? etc.

• Create and illustrate a classroom scrapbook of favorite toys from the past and present. Invite students to decide if the scrapbook is organized by catego
• ry or by time period.

• Play some of the indoor and outdoor games that children heard or learned about.
  
  
• Visit a retirement center to gather information about favorite toys and games from the past.
  
  
• Invite grandparents or older people into the classroom to talk about and/or bring in their favorite games and toys from their childhood.
  
  
• Use the information they have collected to create a timeline of toys and games.