What did you do during summer vacation?

Why this question works

Summers are remembered as one long golden stretch, which makes them a pleasure to talk about. The answer is full of the outdoors and of freedom: swimming holes, bare feet, fireflies in a jar, a week at a relative's farm. Your grandparent does not have to dig for it. It is all still there, usually with the weather attached.

It is also an honest picture of how a family lived. For many grandparents summer meant work as well as play: picking beans, helping in the store, minding the younger children. Hearing about both gives you a real sense of the household, what was expected of a child and what a treat looked like. A nickel for an ice cream or a single trip to the lake can tell you more about a family than a whole page of dates.

How to ask it

Ask it in summer if you can, outside, on a porch or in a yard in the evening. The heat, the light and the sound of crickets do half the work. If it is the middle of winter, a glass of lemonade or a slice of watermelon on the table is a cheerful substitute.

Use US words your grandparent would use: summer vacation, summer break, when school let out. Then ask what a regular day looked like from breakfast to bedtime. Walking through one ordinary day often brings back more than asking for the highlights. Stay relaxed and let the stories wander; summer memories are not in a hurry.

Other ways to word it

• What did you do all day when school was out?
• Where did you go to cool off in the summer?
• Did your family ever take a trip, or have relatives come to stay?
• What chores did you have in the summer?

Follow-up ideas

• Who did you spend those days with?
• How far from home were you allowed to go?
• What did you eat in the summer that you never had the rest of the year?
• Where did you sleep on the hottest nights?
• Did you earn any money in the summer? How?
• What did the last day before school started feel like?
• Is there one summer you remember better than all the others?

An example answer

This is an invented example, written to show the kind of detail to listen for. Your grandpa’s answer will be his own.

"The day school let out, my shoes came off and they stayed off until September. Mornings I had to hoe the garden and feed the chickens, and my mother checked the rows, so there was no cheating. But by noon I was free, and my brother and I went straight to the creek. We had a rope swing over the deep part, and we stayed in the water until our lips went blue."

"Every August we spent a week at my aunt and uncle's farm. Six cousins slept crosswise on two beds on the sleeping porch, and nobody slept much. My uncle made ice cream in a hand-cranked freezer on Sunday, and the rule was that you only got a bowl if you took a turn at the crank. I have never tasted anything as good since."

What to write down

Write down where the summers were spent and with whom, and what an ordinary day looked like from morning chores to bedtime. List the swimming spots, the relatives who were visited and the treats that only appeared in the warm months. Note any way your grandparent earned money and what it was spent on. If one particular summer stands out, give it a paragraph of its own with the year.

A question like this one is part of the school days chapter in the Tell Me Your Story journals for grandparents. With a full page for the answer, there is room for the creek, the chores and the cousins, written in your grandparent's own hand.

See the Tell Me Your Story, Grandpa journal or the Tell Me Your Story, Grandma journal. For more ideas, read questions to ask your grandparents or browse school days questions.