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Building a time capsule is a
neat family project that can involve everyone. In doing
this you can send a message to the future on how you lived as a
family at the dawn of the third millennium. You can include
photographs, documents or just about anything else that will show
people in the future your faith, your dreams, your toys, your
everyday life.
Item Selection
Building your Capsule
Ideas for your Capsule
The Y2KFAM Time
Capsule
- Selecting items to
preserve: Everyone in the family can contribute to
this.
- First, decide as a family what three ideas or concepts
best represent your family (such as faith in God, love of
family, patriotism, etc. ),
- Then decide what three things best represent your family
interests (like model railroading, miniatures, horseback
riding, etc.) you stand for.
- Third, have every member of the household vote on what
three items that would represent the family and family
interests and include them in the capsule.
- Finally, have each family member write a letter to the
future and include a few items that represent them
personally (a Beanie Baby, a toy car, a ring, etc.).
Also describe what each item is and how it is presently used
(people in the future may have no clue other than your
letter as to what your time capsule contains). Do you
think in 100 years people will know what a Pikachu is
without you telling them?
- Building your capsule:
It doesn't have to be expensive. There are sites on the
internet that provide ready made capsules from the inexpensive
to the very expensive.
Depending on how long you want your materials to last, you
can even make one of your own! They're not
expensive and they can last well over 100 years!
John's dad is making one out of PVC pipe (available at any
home center) with PVC end caps. We're making several (one
for ourselves, and 2 as door prizes), out of U.S. Army surplus
ammunition containers (talk about turning swords into
plowshares!).
We bought 2 large tubes and a smaller one (one of the large
tubes and one of the smaller will be given away as a door prizes).
We'll have some pictures of turning the the two ammunition
containers into time capsules over the next few weeks. Those
pictures will show up here!
Get your guests to contribute!
Ask your party guests to contribute a small item (a photo, a coin,
something) to the time capsule as the price of admission to your
party. About 11:30 p.m. take a picture of you and all
your guests to include in the capsule. Place the picture
(identifying everyone) and add a brief description of what it is
they are contributing and place the items in the capsule.
Ideas for the Time Capsule:
- For a few dollars you can buy a PVC plastic tube, some silica
jell (like the little baggie you get with new electronics
sometimes), and you can preserve your stuff for 100 years.
You won't have to bury it, just store it in a cool, dry, safe
place in your house. When its opened on
January 1, 2101, people will still remember who you were and
what some of the stuff in your time capsule was actually used
for). Those baseball cards may be worthless now, but in
100 years, your great-great-grand children may thank you a lot-
all the way to the bank!
- Instructions you leave for the family who open the capsule in
100 years may request that the capsule contents be re-sealed and
even added to by that generation as well for the next 100 years
to be opened in January 1st, 2201!
- For the true explorer, who wants their items preserved for 500
to 1000 years, some companies offer stainless steel boxes, tubes
and sterile gas (air is bad for long term storage), for a lot
more money, but also with a better chance of long term
preservation.
- This site
provides some good ideas on what to include and not include.
- This
site offers materials to keep your preserved items from
deteriorating over time.
- Here's
another site with other (previous) Time Capsule links!
The
Official Y2K Family Time Capsule: If you
need some ideas about what to include or are just curious about what
what we're including. Here's the place to look. We'll
also be adding images of the time capsule construction here.
Here's a list of some of the items:
- U.S. Flag.
- A Bible.
- The Local newspaper for JAN 1st, 2001.
- A letter from the family on Compact Disk (CD).
- A CD containing digital images of our web site, our house,
family life, our neighborhood and contents of the capsule as
well as the family letter.
- News and print articles about the "Official Family of the
New Millennium™" project.
- Cassette and CD recordings of local radios stations including
country, popular, classical music (with commercials).
- VCR tapes with typical network broadcasts (ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC,
PBS).
- Several space shuttle mission patches.
- Pokémon trading/ playing cards.
- Matchbox toy cars.
- A beanie Baby.
- An HO scale boxcar and section of train track.
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Party resources page.
This page was last updated on 12/18/03
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