In many states, sixth grade is the first year of middle school, and your grandchildren may have a lot of new material to deal with. In English class, teachers introduce students to mythology and the study of ancient civilizations. As students analyze myths, they search for meaning in imagery, symbols, and metaphors. Studying mythology also allows students to identify character traits such as courage, cowardice, ambition, or laziness in an easy-to-understand way. Since grandchildren are studying character, biography and autobiography are also important genres this year. Many sixth-graders will even be asked to write a biography and an autobiography for class. Don't be surprised if your grandchildren approach you with a list of questions about your life. Interviewing is an essential biographer’s skill, and grandparents are perennially popular sixth-grade biography subjects.
Shakespeare As You Like It. Your grandchildren may have encountered William Shakespeare's plays in earlier grades, but it was almost certainly in shortened versions with simplified language. Educators have long debated the value of asking children to read Shakespeare at a young age. Some believe there's no point in reading his plays in any language but the original, and that bright students will not appreciate watered-down versions. Others believe Shakespeare's plots are so central to our literature that children should encounter them as early as possible, in whatever form. This year, happily, your grandchildren might have their first opportunity to read the Bard in his own language:
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a popular choice of sixth-grade teachers.
• When you discuss literature with your grandchildren, you help them build essential speaking and analytical skills. And you might actually enjoy reading some of the classic young-adult books the kids are reading in school this year, such as Wilson Rawls's
Where the Red Fern Grows (Doubleday, 1961), Gary Paulsen's
Hatchet (Bradbury, 1987), David Macaulay
's Pyramid (Houghton Mifflin, 1982), and Theodore Taylor's
The Cay (Avon, 1969).
• Can't tell Athena from Apollo? Brush up on your ancient gods by reading their amazing tales in a recent edition of Edith Hamilton’s classic 1942 work Mythology. Hamilton explains all the myths your grandchildren are studying in English and then some. The book is also a wonderful gift for kids with an interest in mythology.
Audio-Visual History. Help your grandchildren build interview skills and develop multimedia proficiency by producing a family history video with them. Find some old family photographs and invite your grandchildren to record or videotape you talking about them. Using a scanner or simple video editing software (find some tips
here), you and your grandchildren can put together a video or DVD scrapbook of your life.
Stories in Art. Take your grandchildren to the ancient Greek or Roman section of an art museum, and search together for evidence of each culture’s mythology in the artwork its people created. If you can’t get to a museum in person, visit the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's
Greek and Roman wing.
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