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 may contain a DVD and/or CD, a program manual, songbooks, and other supporting material that may trigger memories to share.
The kits are especially popular with older adult groups and as 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 sent to the library of your choice.
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Remembering Automobiles
They stay with us forever, the cars of our youth. Who can't name their family's first car? Who can ever forget the car in which he or she learned to drive - its color, its bulk, its very odor? Rev up for a fast-paced discussion of cross-country trips in other decades, first cars, favorite cars, perhaps even a fender-bender. Help each person write an auto-biography! Talk about women drivers and teen-age drivers and mature drivers. You oughta have an auto program with your group!
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Remembering Birthdays
Another birthday? Celebrate! Each candle represents a year, with all of 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! This kit offers a wide variety of ideas for discussion, celebration, and fun. Use this kit with intergenerational groups and families to promote understanding of what aging is all about. Help stamp out those tired old over-the-hill jokes!
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Remembering County Fairs
There was a time in a more rural America when the fair offered the opportunity for days off from work to show off a year's work raising animals, sewing, crafting, preserving, baking. A time to learn about new things, to play games, to see friends and neighbors. Recapture that time. Consider working on a project for next year's fair. Plan a field trip. With this kit, everyone can go to the fair!
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Remembering Fall
So begins an irresistible invitation to remember autumns past; the sights and sounds and smells, the textures, and the taste treats. The first part of the media is an entertaining nine-minute monologue. After this narrator tells his story, your group members will want to tell theirs. Who can help but notice how getting ready for winter has changed over the years? It's a cool and refreshing program topic for a hot summer afternoon.
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Remembering Farm Days
It has been said that nothing in the American scene has changed so much in the last half-century as country life. This kit offers the opportunity to explore the sights, sounds, aromas, sweat, tears, work and laughter that have gone into the farms where today's adults were children. This kit is for those who remember another pace of life, and for those who wish they did.
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Remembering the Fashion
This is a topic of perpetual interest, because fashion is, after all, an endless replay. What is in fashion now has been in before and will be out and then in again. Each generation chooses its own fashions and rejects another's. Hair, swimwear, shoes, and that one unforgettable outfit are all great topics for women and men to remember and talk about. |
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Remembering The Fifties
The decade that brought us babies and the Korean War and TV dinners and babies and civil rights and Tupperware and babies and Joe McCarthy and McDonald’s and babies and Scrabble and Elvis and teen-agers…(and babies). We were rockin’ and rollin’ as we put together these pictures, music, news events and family stories to bring back memories of the fifties for everyone who was there and to help explain the Ike Age to those who weren't.
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Remembering Fun and Games
Remembering Fun and Games. The games of life. Any number can play. Everyone can win. All you have to do is join in. You have to be willing to forget all your cares and troubles for awhile and let the most important thing be the game itself. Board games. Cards. Recess. Backyard fun. Remember? |
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Remembering Home
This kit can take people to the "places where they like to be"- in their memories, in their dreams, in their imaginations. Once there, the goal is to discover what there is about our dream homes that may be transferred to the places where we are now. What is at the "heart of home" for each of us? A favorite item, photograph, texture, sound, scent, or taste may come from the past to make someone feel more at home in the present. We all need a place where we feel comfortable, where we feel "at home." We hope that this kit will help your group members to find those places for themselves, and to find those feelings in the places where they are. |
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Remembering the Home Front
At least two generations of Americans now living have been directly affected by World War II: the veterans of the war and the home front and their baby boom children. Now is the time to share and compare experiences, insights, and attitudes about that war, and war in general.
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Remembering Music
Music is the universal language. It can say for us what we can't say for ourselves. Without saying a word, music can remind us of the occasions of our lives, the events, the celebrations, the transitions. George Sand wrote, "It is extraordinary how music sends one back into memories of the past." It is extraordinary.
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Remembering Pets
Here is a warm and fuzzy reminder of the animals who have found a place in our homes and hearts. But even those who don't love animals usually have stories about why they don't. Dog and cat owners like to debate the relative merits of their pets. Music, skits, pictures, and readings are all designed to prompt lively conversation.
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Remembering School Days
The best way today's children can find out what life used to be like is from yesterday's children.
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Remembering Spring
Every year, just when we've had enough winter, spring arrives. The season officially begins on a day in March when the night and day are of equal length. Then according to old songs and legends, wonderful things happen very suddenly. The birds appear in the northern regions, the flowers burst into view, and young men and young women fall in love automatically. That's according to old songs and legends. You'll have to check with the people in your groups to find out the truth. |
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Remembering Summertime
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. And sneak in some sparklers. |
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Remembering Train Rides
Not too long ago trains crisscrossed this country, whizzing passengers to their destinations. Now one songwriter worries about the day his young son will ask him, "Daddy, what's a train?" "Ideal for intergenerational study of train rides themselves or the myriad topics that, like trunk lines, branch out from it." Donna Barkman, in Learning from the Past. |
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Remembering Work Life
Most of us have spent most of our lives working. Use this kit to gather the stories of paid jobs and work done at home or on the farm. Individually our work experiences are an important part of each of our lives. Taken together they provide a perspective on the work life of a nation.
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