Make a 2017 Time Capsule

It's 2018 already! Even though we're almost done with the first month of the new year, I thought it would be a good idea to give our kids the opportunity to reflect on 2017 and look forward to what this year has in store for them. This program went through a lot of incarnations before I finally landed on what is below. I borrowed from a lot of websites, from stay-at-home mom blogs to official time capsule sites, and if you are planning your own time capsule program, i encourage you to do the same. Also, don't be afraid to go with your own creative instincts! That's what makes program planning fun.

The original idea for our time capsule vessels was to buy plastic containers, but we have a small yearly budget and I did not want to limit the amount of people who came to this program. In my online research (*cough*Pinterest*cough*) I found the idea of recycling two liter soda bottles into time capsule vessels.

I happen to have a family member who drinks a fairly significant amount of Diet Coke, and they were happy to save their bottles for me. This lead to me standing in the staff kitchen with an impossibly giant knife slicing 30+ bottles in half, while trying not to send myself to the ER for stitches.

The slicing of the bottles was the most time-consuming part of planning. The rest consisted of setting our craft supplies to decorate your capsule, and printing some handouts.

I kept the craft supplies to glitter glue, stickers, and adhesive foam cut-outs. I wasn't exactly ready to clean up paint today.

One of the handouts was information about what a time capsule is, and all the ways you can personalize it to make it special to you. The rest were sheets to fill out about your life in the last year; the idea was to fill them out and put them in your time capsule, then see how your life has changed when you open your time capsule a year or more from now.

I even found out that you can register your time capsule with the official International Time Capsule website! It turns out anyone can do this, whether it's a thousand-year capsule made of titanium being buried in a public place, or a shoe box you plan to keep in the back of your closet. I set out one of our laptops with the website in case anyone wanted to register theirs, and a few people took advantage of this cool opportunity.

I gave out this handout as well, with information about what a time capsule is and why you should want to create one (click to enlarge and read).

I think the people who attended this program had a good time, and I hope they come back a few years from now and let me know how they enjoyed looking through their 2017 time capsule!