Math project: Century

Discussion Questions:

1. What is a century? What is a centenarian?
2. Draw one line for each year old you are. Draw one line for each year a centenarian has lived.
3. What changes happen over a century?

Family Food Traditions

Use one or more of these ideas to explore the importance of food in our family traditions:

1. Make chicken salad sandwiches.
2. Why did Greatpaw and Nathaniel like chicken salad sandwiches so much?
3. Describe the taste of the sandwiches. Write a poem about the taste.
4. Did Greatpaw and Nathaniel make chicken salad sandwiches because they liked them, because it was a tradition, or both?
5. What food traditions do you have in your family? (Popcorn on Saturday night, chicken on Sunday, chocolate cake for birthdays?)

“If I began a storytelling club…”

If you started a storytelling club, what would you name it and what type of stories would you tell?

“If my grandpa or grandma were sad…”

Greatpaw was lonely and sad. Nathaniel had to think of a way to make him happy again. If someone you loved was sad, what would you do to make them happy?

This can be a writing project and/or a brainstorming session. It can be specifically about an older person or about anyone you love.

Have the students brainstorm how they would get that person involved in life and happy again. Would they buy him/her a puppy? Would they ask them to take pictures of all their Little League games? Would they visit them and sing songs together? Would they write them letters with funny illustrations?

Family History

Interview a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or parent. Ask them to remember and share one of their favorite experiences growing up. Ask them what year the event happened.

Write the story down and share with the class. Share the oldest event and the most recent.

100-year timeline

Make a timeline. If someone is 100 years old this year, what are the events in history that they would have seen, experienced, or read about in their daily newspaper? (The Wright brothers flew the first powered airplane in 1903. The first transcontinental telephone call was in 1915. The first airmail postage was in 1918. Now we’ve walked on the moon, and we have cell phones and the Internet!)

What’s the story?

Through storytelling, children can understand what’s involved in writing the stories that make history. This project has four parts:

1. Tell a story of a person you know. Gather the students and their family members for a storytelling session. Choose a person the group knows about. The group will tell this person’s story. Decide who will begin, and go clockwise from there with each person adding to the story. Set a time limit so that you must end the story somewhere.

2. Read a folk story or fairy tale, for example, Little Red Riding Hood. Talk about how the story begins and ends, who the characters are and what they feel, and what happens. Ask how this fairy tale is different from the story told about the real person you know.

3. Read a story about an historical event. Choose a moment in world history, for example the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Revolutionary War, or a current event. Ask the librarian for help in choosing material that is at the student’s reading level.

4. Write about what you learned. Help the student write about this storytelling experience: In the storytelling session about the person you know, how did you verify the “truth” when there were differences of opinion about what “really happened”? If you were to write the story of a real event for the newspaper, what would be most important in preparing for it? Where would you get your information? How would you check the accuracy of the information?