A Family Time Capsule

Preserve the memories of your children’s youth while making a fun keepsake. At the beginning of the summer choose and decorate a container to store all the mementos you will collect to put inside a time capsule. When choosing a container, it should be airtight, watertight and sturdy.

After a container has been chosen the next step is to decide how long it will be sealed for. The longer the better but be warned young children may want to open it up the day after it is put away! The best thing to do is put it in a place that they don’t know about or cannot access. A good time frame is 5-10 years.

Sit down with the children and explain to them that you want to preserve the memories that they are going to make that summer and brainstorm some of the things that can go into it.

Some ideas are:

* Photographs (get some photo-safe envelopes to store them in for protection)
* Crafts
* Toys
* Awards won
* Letters
* If you include any DVD’s or other types of media you may want to consider how they will be used in the future – it is possible they may be obsolete if you are storing your time capsule for 10 years or more into the future.

If you are going to store your time capsule for years and years make sure you leave yourself some form of reminder to take the time capsule with you if you move (especially if you have decided to bury it in the backyard).

Keep the items in the time capsule personal and meaningful to your family. You can always check a history book or newspaper archive to find out about the news of the day – unless of course your family was in the news.