Your Family in a Nutshell

Above: Photo of Hope © Jon Pratty.

Help your child to create a time capsule documenting your family as it is now, and your grandchildren will thank you in years to come.

Discuss with your child what they feel are the defining characteristics of your family. It could be photographs of you all, a drawing of your house, recipes for your favourite meals, video recordings of the family describing a typical day, a letter from each person about their hopes and dreams for the future, drawings by the children of each other, your weekly shopping receipt - any number of things. The key is to keep it very personal.

Discuss how these things will be stored, where they will be kept and how far in the future they should be looked at again.

Once all that's decided, let them loose on actually amassing the contents. To make the capsule seem extra special to the child, allow them as free a rein as possible. This exercise should hopefully make a child think about how our everyday lives seem 'normal' to us, but will be a part of history to our descendants.