"Time machine effect": when grandparents go back to school to tell their grandchildren what life was like when they were children. An intergenerational relationship observed from an historical perspective

Abstract. The project “The time machine effect” involved a class group of the fourth-class group of primary school located in the southwest suburbs of Florence, and it has set itself the goal of putting children in direct contact with the reality of the past starting from the narration that their grandparents they did by remembering some aspects of when they were their age. The grandparents who made themselves available to participate in the project, told their childhood by comparing it with that of their grandchildren today. The collaborative and interactive learning experience has been designed and implemented in an interdisciplinary perspective, in an attempt to succeed in making interdisciplinary activities and competences interact: history, corporeity and emotions for dramatization, citizenship competences. In a time characterized by the many historical changes also favored by technology, it seems necessary to create the conditions to put in touch the generation of grandparents with that of their grandchildren in an educational perspective: the transmission of knowledge of the past through the generations is a priceless heritage because it is a passage that has emotional implications. Involving older people in school life by strengthening intra-community ties, in our day, is a hypothesis to reduce the generational gap by improving the understanding of experiences in different periods, emphasizing the equality and differences of the daily life.