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Bi-Folkal Kits

What's a Bi-Folkal Kit?

A Bi-Folkal Kit is a packaged program designed to bring back memories of a particular time or topic and invite involvement and sharing. Each kit centers on a different theme such as school days, automobiles, summertime, county fairs, and train rides. Each kit contains slides, videocassettes, tape cassettes, songbooks, sniff cards, skit scripts, a program manual, things to touch, and suggestions for things to taste. All five senses can trigger memories and transmit information.

The kits are especially popular with older adult groups and multi-generational activities where older adults can reminisce and younger generations can learn. They can also be used at family and social events. To request a kit click on the title of interest below and place a hold through our catalog. The kit will be send to the library of your choice. For further assistance please contact the Bookmobile Office at 408.293.2326 ext. 3060.

Remembering Pets
Here's a chance to talk about the pets in our homes and hearts. Watch how the dog and cat owners in your group debate the canine vs. feline merits. Even those who don't adore animals usually have stories about why! Music, skits, pictures, and readings are all designed to prompt lively discussion.

Remembering Fall
The first 60 slides in this kit accompany a nine-minute monologue called Frost, You Say? recorded by the late Maine storyteller, Marshall Dodge. Words and pictures illustrate the activities of an independent farmer as he thinks about getting his place ready for winter. After the narrator tells his story, your group members will want to tell theirs. The last 20 slides add even more Fall Color and opportunities for discussion.

Remembering County Fairs
Remember the county fair? Remember the days off from work to show off a year's work raising animals, sewing, crafting, preserving, and baking? This kit reflects on how the fair was a time to learn about new things, play games, see friends and neighbors.

Remembering Work Life
Today's older adults have built roads and bridges, kept warehouses stocked, and kept the line moving. They worked hard, raised children, provided for their families, and built traditions that continue today. The media presentation Many Hands begins with the call to work, compares work days present and past, and considers the reasons why we work. Gather stories of paid jobs, work done on the farms, and work done at home. List events and inventions since 1920. Individually our work experiences are an important part of our lives. Taken together they provide a perspective on the work life of a nation.

Remembering Fun and Games
The media presentation, The Games of Life, explores the fun of a lifetime, encourages a vote for a favorite game, and suggests that it's never too late to have fun. There are all kinds of things to touch in The Game of Games. Our original board game is designed to bring back memories of all kinds of games, to offer the opportunity to try some of them again, and to have lots of fun while doing it.

Remembering Summertime
In the media presentation, Summer Is the slam of a screen door, the slap of a fly swatter, the clink of ice cubes in a glass and many more sights and sounds. Conjure up home remedies for common summer ailments such as sunburn, poison ivy, bee stings and insect bites. Trace summer vacation routes on a map. Get some lemons and make real old-fashioned lemonade.

Remembering Music
Music is the universal language. Just a few notes can bring back the times and the events and the emotions of our lives. Music can calm, energize, create a mood, define a generation. This kit will direct you to do it all, without missing a beat.

Remembering the Fashion
Everyone has an outfit or an item of clothing that they remember clearly and can describe in detail. Just ask! This kit explores how attitudes and events have influenced the fashion for men and women and how fashion has influenced us.

Remembering the Home Front
Nearly sixty years after the end of the war, we are losing veterans every day. Now is the time for them, their baby boom children and the next generations to share and compare experiences and attitudes about the war and any war. The Stars on the Home Front during World War II did war work, saved fuel and rubber, read newspapers and listened to the radio while they waited for (and worried about) their loved ones overseas. A skit recreates a wartime discussion and is called "Don't-cha Know there's A War on?"

Remembering School Days
Here are one great-grand-mother's memories of a one-room schoolhouse, a city high school, and adult learning opportunities at educational assemblies called Chautauquas. Lessons in arithmetic, reading, spelling, cursive and music are in large print in the booklets titled Remembering Schoolbooks.

Remembering Train Rides
This kit provides materials to recall the golden age of train travel. Enjoy music, sound effects, and interview excerpts. Included are slide trips to bygone railway stations and stops to compare old and new advertising campaigns.

Remembering Automobiles
They stay with us forever, the cars of our youth. Who can ever forget the car in which he or she learned to drive - its color, its bulk, its very odor? You Oughta Have An Auto! encourages viewers to look back at their lives and their cars to see what effect they have had on each other.

Remembering Birthdays
Another birthday? Celebrate! Our media presentation explains that each candle on a cake represents a year, with all the work and play, sadness and joy, laughter and tears that it took to live it. Each birthday offers an opportunity to reflect on those years, and to make plans for the candle to come. So, many happy returns to this kit with its positive perspective on aging!

Remembering Farm Days
Morning Chores and Other Times Remembered are shared in poetry, slides and music. This kit is for those who remember another pace of life, and for those who wish they did.