Media in the classroom has become very common -- even as early as sixth grade. Many classrooms come equipped with computers, video games and video equipment. Use the media in your classroom to help the kids in your class create oral histories of their grandparents. If you have invited their grandparents to come to the classroom, set up the camera and ask each child to interview them about their life and history. You can also use the classroom media to record poems or stories that the students have written about their grandparents, to make documentaries of their visit to the class, or to record the grandparents as they read from books about grandparents during story hour.
Creating scrapbooks provides you with a way to incorporate words and text into your Grandparents Day celebrations. Ask your kids to collect photos of them and their grandparents. Instruct them to select photos that convey a visual narrative. Put together books in class. Choose stationery or another kind of decorative paper and bind it into books using ribbon and other materials. Have the students write captions that tell the story of them and their grandparents. Present the books to the grandparents when they visit the classroom.
A person's family history is often a study of geography. Grandparents Day offers you a number of ways to bring this theme into your geography lessons. Get a map that the students can mark on and hang it up on the bulletin board. Have each child make a small card with their grandparents' picture on it. Have them pin the card to the map to show where their grandparents' families came from.
You can provide additional geographic lessons by having the kids learn how to say grandma and grandpa in foreign languages. Have them create calligraphy pieces with the words "grandma and grandpa" in the foreign language that represents their family history. Tape this to the bulletin board as well.
Art projects provide you with an enjoyable way to bring the grandparents theme to your classroom. There's a number of ways you can create art activities that represent Grandparents Day. For the students who like to draw or paint, ask them to make portraits from photographs. Make papier-mache representations of their grandparents' heads. Collect photos and illustrations for them to make collages about their grandparents. Study art history by examining artists families such as the Wyeths.