We have a tradition in our family of making time capsules with our third grade kids. There are two buried around the property already.
We ask the kids to write about themselves and collect items that reflect our current life and culture, to give future people an idea of it was like to be alive in our time. This year it is Corvus’ turn, but this year is also special. This year we are in the midst of a pandemic and no matter what happens in the coming months, the year 2020 is sure to go down in history books. I have written about the power and importance of writing before in “The Art of Letter Writing and the Digital Dark Age”. This is the perfect opportunity to give the people of the future a personal window into this historic time. You can write about what the situation is like in your town or State. Here is our message for our 2020 pandemic time capsule:
And this is Corvus’ message:
My name is Corvus. I am 9 years old. My family lives on this land in a small home. My family is made up of my mom and dad, my five brothers, one sister, and me. We keep chickens, turkeys, and sheep. We also have two cats, a rabbit, two dogs, a tortoise, a cockatoo, two fish, two crabs, and a moth that hatched from a cocoon we found in the garden last Fall. I am interested in dinosaurs. I want to be a paleontologist in the future. Were I live there are almost no people. It is mostly forest.
Corvus Bender.
All you need for your time capsule is a container; in the past we have used fancy, ceramic ones, but times are weird and we are doing our best to isolate as much as possible. A rubbermaid container will do!
Some things we used to fill our time capsule:
- A March 2020 calendar page.
- Family pictures.
- An Alaska Railroad Pin.
- An Alaska State Fair ride/food ticket.
- Feathers from our turkeys and chickens.
- A dinosaur toy (Corvus likes dinosaurs).
- A Blu Ray cover of the movie Joker.
- A (spent) chicken firework (we like fireworks).
- A Corona bottle cap.
- A Happy Coronavirus sticker.
- An emoji keychain.
What you put in your capsule is up to you! What does your family like? What are your interests? It’s your choice what to put in, but please try not to cough or sneeze into your time capsule; we don’t want to actually preserve the virus for the future 😉
This is such a great idea. You should have put world deaths and pandemic on there. Maybe the last living humans will find this and wonder why they are alone. And a snickers bar…or 2
Great ideas, Nancy! We still have snow down and frozen ground, so it will be a while before we can bury our capsule anyway. We can add stuff. I actually thought about throwing a snickers in!! (But I only have a few left, so maybe after I go shopping again 😜)