“How Grandparents Stay In Touch”
Free toddlers activity & Parent Child Development guide parenting article

10 great projects from FamilyFun by Emily B. Todd

Whenever Anne Upchurch got word that one of her daughters or daughters-in-law was in labor, she immediately jumped in the car and drove four or five hours it took to get to the nearest hospital.

Her record is good--she hasn't missed the birth of even one of her grandchildren. An energetic grandmother of six girls and one boy, Anne passes on this practiced advice to new grandparents eager to form a meaningful relationship with their grandchildren: "Start young."

The ABCs of Photo Albums

Mary Bell of Springfield, Virginia, is a self-described "album person." She teaches classes on how to assemble photo albums, carefully documents events in her family and treasures the disintegrating album, annotated in white ink, that her mother made in 1923. So when Mary's first grandchild, Connor, was born two years ago, he provided her with a new outlet for her hobby.

To help Connor learn his ABCs, Mary decided to use family photos to illustrate an alphabet book which would double as a record of memorable family events. She sorted the photos according to letter (a photo of the family picking apples might be categorized under A for "apples") and then pasted them into a scrapbook. With a children's dictionary by her side, Mary would come up with polysyllabic words beginning with the featured letter ("gallivanting" or "opulent," words to grow into) and funny phrases ("Crazy Grandpa Bob with a colander on his head") to describe the photos.

The key, Mary suggests, is to organize the book so that it tells a story about the family. Connor's book, for example, records the antics of his grandfather Bob Bell, 60, his uncle David's swimming awards and his own first Christmas. And while Mary takes a professional approach to the project, she reassures other grandparents that any ABCs photo album they make would be wonderful for the grandchild. "Don't think it has to be perfect," says Mary.

Camp Pine Needle

After hearing all about the action-packed few days her daughters spent with their grandparents Anne and Ken Upchurch, Lib Roberts kidded, "That's the camp I want to go to!" So the Upchurches decided to call their extended visits with their grandchildren "camp."

"We came up with the name Camp Pine Needle, put up a banner and wore Camp Director visors and T-shirts," Anne, 64, remembers. Camp Pine Needle debuted in 1990 and four-year-old cousins Coleman, Elizabeth and Anne. Six years later, Camp Pine Needle has become an institution. The Upchurches now run two summer camps each season: one for their three older granddaughters (now 10) and one for their three younger granddaughters (six and seven). Sam, their three-year-old grandson, has not yet become an official camper.

To better organize their time together, Anne comes up with an age-appropriate theme--from learning about birds or bugs to exploring family heritage. "I do whatever comes to my mind," Anne says. Once she gets an idea, she begins to research activities and resources, and then gathers a bag of supplies and gifts for the visit.

When the younger girls came to learn about birds, for instance, Anne gave each child a pair of binoculars and some bird toys. During the week, the girls built a birdhouse with their grandfather, learned that a hummingbird's beak works like a medicine dropper, and decorated a pine tree with popcorn and oranges for the birds to feed on. In the end, they learned to love bird-watching. "They wore the binoculars the whole time and jerked them up whenever they saw a bird," Anne recalls.

For the older cousins, a favorite summer camp involved a trip to Anne's mother's hometown of Culloden, Georgia, population 250. They all stayed in the Holmes Hotel, which had once belonged to Anne's great-great-grandfather, and sat in the choir stalls of a church built by her grandfather. On a visit to the town's cemetery, the girls sought out family tombstones and had a contest to find the oldest grave. While they were at the hotel, they watched a video prepared by Anne's uncle, 78-year-ol Capers Holmes, which featured old photographs of the town.

Even though the Upchurches carefully plan each camp session, Anne urges grandparents not to overdo it. "Don't structure every hour on the hour. The kids will want some time to play by themselves." Anne also advises grandparents to begin simple annual traditions, such as going out every evening to an ice-cream shop with their grandfather. "This is one time for all of us to be together, and I think it creates real bonds among the cousins."

Model Railroading

Mike Companion's association with model railroads began in the 1940s with a windup train and a layout made of cardboard. In the '60s, now a family man with two girls and a boy, he upgraded to a more elaborate layout. But now that he's a grandfather, Mike has the train layout of his dreams. He and his grandsons, Jason, 13; Jeremy, 7; and Matthew, 3, have constructed two large loops which run passenger and freight trains from the Union Pacific, Santa Fe and Burlington lines.

Even though Mike has a long history of model railroading, he depends on his grandchildren's enthusiasm and skills to keep the project going. The grandsons' interest in airplanes inspired the addition of the airfield, for instance, and their growing love of rockets might one day lead to a shuttle-launching pad. On a more down-to-earth level, Mike depends on his grandsons' young eyes and nimble fingers. These days he assumes the role of teacher, showing his grandsons how to use specialized tools or how to glue on parts, and the boys take it from there.

Jeremy, for example, has assumed responsibility for reading the instructions (usually in small print) and gluing on tiny pieces of piping or airplane parts. He then directs his grandpa's assembly of the bigger parts. "When you're sitting down, working on something and building something, that's how you get to know your grandkids," Mike says with satisfaction.

Video Storybooks

In the Webb's house in Ashland City, Tennessee, the latest blockbuster is a video of grandmother Ellen Claiborne, 54, reading ELLEN AND PENGUIN and seven-year-old cousin Bethany Benson reading THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR to three-year-old Natalie Webb. Grandpa Lucien Claiborne, 56, and paternal grandparents Charles and Ruth Webb, both 57, join in with other stories.

For the first several weeks after the video was made, Natalie watched the tape daily. Not only has the tape reminded Natalie of her long-distance relatives' faces and voices, it has also fostered a love of paging through picture books. Dr. Seuss books, especially HOP ON POP, are the newest favorites.

Grandmother Nature

In the small community of Kanopolis, Kansas, Luetta Havlik is known by local schoolchildren as The Butterfly Lady. She earned this title four years ago when she donated a swallowtail caterpillar to her granddaughter Randi's kindergarten class in nearby Ellsworth. The five-year-olds eagerly watched as the caterpillar metamorphosed into a butterfly with "stained-glass window wings," Luetta, 66, recalls.

Now that her four local grandchildren are in school, Luetta and her husband Laddie, 79, have ended up planting more and more dill in her garden to attract butterflies and keep up with the increasing demand. Luetta now tries to provide each of her grandchildren's classes with at least one caterpillar every year. She hopes her gifts to the school will instill all the town's children with an appreciation of nature, but she's also pleased just to contribute to her grandchildren's education.

The Family Forest

In 1980, Wayne Swanson planted a green ash in his hometown of Merrifield, Minnesota, and named it Lonnie, for his five-year-old granddaughter. Lonnie and the ash were the same height at the time: three-and-a-half feet. This began a new springtime ritual.

Each year a grandchild is born into the Swanson family, Wayne, 72, and his wife, Jeannette, 71, gather family members for a tree planting. Wayne measures the new baby and selects and plants a tree that is the same size; an evergreen and a five-month-old, for example, might both be 24 inches high. Then Wayne makes a wooden sign bearing the baby's name and places it beside the tree.

The ritual continues beyond the first tree planting, however. Every spring or early summer, the nine grandchildren take position next to their respective trees to see how tall each one has grown. Wayne then records the measurements and photographs the grandchildren standing beside their trees.

"For the first few years, the kids and trees stay together," says Wayne. "Then these things take off and leave the kids behind." At first he zealously tried to get an accurate measurement of the towering trees. He'd affix a tape measure to the end of a stick, grab a ladder and enlist the help of his grandchildren. "But then I figured, nuts, I'm just going to take their picture and they can see how big their trees are. They know they've lost."

Fill the Mailbox

When Diane Schultz, of Magalia, California, sensed that her grandchildren seemed shy with her and with one another, she initiated a letter-writing contest to break the ice. First, she sent out a letter announcing the contest and that prizes would be available for acheivements such as most letters, funniest letter, most original letter and most creative letter (there were eight categories in all, enough for all participating grandchildren).

The rules of the game were simple: The kids, who hail from California, Washington and Oklahoma, could write to anyone, not just to Grandma, but to be considered for the prizes, they had to send along a photocopy of their letter to her. And when they wrote her directly, they had to fulfill two requirements: (1) tell her something she didn't know and (2) ask her something they wanted to know. This led Krystal, 15, to inform her grandmother about Brad Pitt. "She had a mad crush on Brad Pitt and made clear she'd appreciate anything collectible," Diane remembers. And Rose, 16, began educating her grandmother about driver's ed. "I think she thought they didn't have cars in my day," Diane says.

After the letter-writing contest, Diane suggested that the cousins, no longer shy, compose a story together. Krystal began the tale, stopped midsentence and sent it on to another cousin. After the story wended its way through the cousins, Rose wrote the conclusion.

Transatlantic Tapes

When Richard Williams, 73, visits his grandsons, Marc and Matthew in Brussels, Belgium, they bake bread together. So last year he and his wife, Linda, decided to describe the process of bread-baking on audiotape and send it along to his grandchildren.

On the tape, Richard describes kneading the dough, setting it aside to rise, punching it down and forming the loaves. Between the steps, while the bread is rising, Richard and Linda read Winnie-the-Pooh, COULD BE WORSE! and other stories. Throughout the tape, Richard talks directly to his grandsons, sometimes making silly requests of them ("Put your right toe in your left ear") and laughing.

According to the boys' mother, Christine Sollinger, the eclectic tape has been a hit. "My oldest, a natural-born listener and book-lover, has played the tape at least once a day since it arrived. He has the entire tape memorized."

Family Tales

I always lose my gloves! I am in third grade. I always lose them in school on the way home or on the long walk to Hebrew school. Then I have to go look for them, but wherever I look, under the desks, in the hedges or on the sidewalks I pass, I never can find them. So begins Hedy Markowitz's story, THE LOST GLOVE, which she wrote for her grandchildren, Danny, Brianna, and Adam, who live in Livingston, New Jersey.

The story takes place in the 1940s and recounts a trip Hedy took to the Central Park Zoo. Written from an eight-year-old's perspective, Hedy describes her surprise and horror when an elephant plucked her borrowed glove from her hand and ate it: "The elephant backs up in his cage, arcs his great gray trunk in a big circle once more, places the little black leather glove in his smiling mouth and swallows," she writes.

This story about the bold, naughty elephant is one of several that Hedy and her husband, Arie, have written for their three grandchildren. Sprinkled with details about their childhood in Europe and America during and after World War II, the Markowitzes' stories evoke their own family history and convey the common experiences of being young--winning an achievement award, fearing the ridicule of fellow first-grade classmates or being scolded for losing a glove yet again.

The kids love to read the stories and have taken to asking their mom questions about what it was like when their grandparents were young. Reading stories about their grandparents' past, Hedy hopes, will help Danny, Brianna and Adam gradually learn more about their family. "As they get older, maybe they'll get to know me as a person, not just as Grandma," Hedy says, "someone who has a life, someone who came from somewhere."

CORRESPONDENCE COURSE

When Lauren Beltz entered first grade in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, and found that reading did not come easily, she simply stopped trying. Accustomed to success as an athlete, Lauren was willing to let her older brother, a whiz at school, stand in the academic spotlight while she shone on the field. Then Lauren's Ohio grandmother, Glenda Brown, 54, intervened.

With the help of her husband, Loyal, 60, Glenda began to devise custom-made phonics exercises along with a sheet of fun activities, such as coloring or connect the dots, to send to Lauren. Lauren would then complete the exercises and return them to her grandmother. If the exercises were all correct, Glenda would send along a small treat. Otherwise, she would send a note of encouragement.

After several months of practicing phonics, Lauren has become one of the best readers in her class. At the end of second grade, she was one of the narrators in her school play and now she reads the GOOSEBUMPS series avidly.

This exercise had the added effect of turning Lauren into a trusty correspondent. She still writes to her grandmother almost weekly; recently she typed a letter that was addressed to "Mrs. Brown" and signed "Your friend, Lauren Beltz" (apparently , she had just learned letter-writing etiquette in school). Glenda hopes this exchange will build a strong connection between them. "As she gets older, I hope she'll be able to tell me when she needs something. I hope she'll turn to her grandma for advice someday."

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