An All About My Grandpa printable is an interview page a child fills in by asking their grandfather questions: his first job, what he did at their age, the food he remembers, the advice he would give. The child writes the answers down, and the completed page becomes a small family record in a child's handwriting.
The page is a device for starting a conversation that would not otherwise happen. Children rarely ask their grandparents anything, not out of disinterest but because they do not know what there is to ask.
"Nothing much happened to me" is not an answer to accept
Ask a grandfather about his life and a lot of them will say some version of this. It is almost never true. It usually means the question was too big — "tell me about your life" has no entry point, so the honest answer is a shrug.
Small questions get big answers. "What did you have for breakfast when you were eight?" produces a rationing story, a farm, a walk to school, a brother who stole the good bits. The specific question is a door; the general one is a wall.
This is why a printed page works better than good intentions. The prompts are already small, already specific, and a child asking them is far harder to deflect than an adult asking the same thing.
The questions that get stories
- What was your first job, and what did it pay? The number is always remembered and always surprising, and it opens onto everything else.
- What did you do after school when you were my age? Anchoring it to the child's exact age makes both of them do the arithmetic, and that is where it gets interesting.
- What is something you were not allowed to do? Better than asking what he did. Rules date a childhood precisely.
- What did your house smell like? An odd question that works remarkably well. Smell memories are vivid and they arrive with everything attached.
- What is the furthest you had travelled by the time you were twenty? For many grandfathers the answer is under fifty miles, and children find this genuinely astonishing.
- What did you want to be? And then, gently: did that happen?
- What would you tell me if I was about to do something stupid? Children phrase it better than adults do, and the answers are better too.
Avoid, unless he opens the door himself: war, illness, money troubles, anyone who has died. Those stories come out when they are ready, usually at the third sitting, and rarely because someone asked directly.
Run it as a conversation, not a worksheet
- Give the page to the child, not the grandparent. The whole dynamic depends on who is asking. An adult handing a form to an elderly man produces short answers; a nine-year-old asking produces stories.
- Do not aim to finish it. Four questions answered properly beat twelve answered in three words. The page can come back out at Christmas.
- Record the audio. A phone on the table, face down. This is the single most valuable thing on this page. The writing captures the facts; only the recording captures the voice, the pauses and the laugh. Ask first, and it will be forgotten within a minute.
- Let the child write it in their own words, including the spelling. A page tidied up by an adult loses the thing that made it worth keeping.
- Follow every answer with "what happened next?" One follow-up question doubles the length of an interview. It is the only technique that matters.
- Date it and name it. Both names, the place, the day. In thirty years nobody will remember which grandchild wrote it.
See the printable
Here is the All About My Grandpa interview page, with prompts a child can read and answer on their own.
View the All About My Grandpa printable on Etsy — instant digital download.
There is a matching All About My Grandma page, so cousins or siblings can each take one.
Printing it and keeping it
Print two copies. One stays with the family, one goes to the grandparent. He will read it more often than anyone expects.
120 gsm paper or heavier. A page that is going into a box for decades should not be 80 gsm printer paper, which yellows and tears at the folds.
Leave the photo space empty until later. Glue the photo in once, properly, rather than taping something in on the day and losing it.
Photograph the finished page. Paper burns, floods and gets thrown out in house clearances. A photograph of it costs nothing and lives in three places at once.
If several grandchildren do one each, keep them together in one folder. The differences between them — same grandfather, four completely different accounts — turn out to be the interesting part.
If he cannot answer the questions
Some families come to this page too late, or with a grandfather whose memory has gone. The page still has a use, and it is worth saying so plainly.
Turn it around: let the adults answer it about him, and let the child do the writing. What his house smelled like, what he did for work, what he always said. The child still ends up with a page in their own handwriting about a grandfather they will otherwise only half remember, and the adults usually find they knew more than they thought.
And if he can still answer some of it but not all: ask those. A partly filled page is not a failed one. The empty lines are part of the record too.
Frequently asked questions
What age can a child do a grandparent interview?
From about five with an adult writing, and independently from seven or eight. Teenagers do it well too, and tend to ask better follow-up questions.
How long does it take?
Twenty minutes for a short version. A good one runs to an hour and does not get finished, which is the right outcome.
What if my grandfather gives one-word answers?
Ask smaller questions, and follow each one with "what happened next?". "Tell me about your childhood" gets a shrug; "what did you eat for breakfast" gets ten minutes.
Should I record it as well?
Yes. A phone recording alongside the written page is the part families value most later, and it costs nothing.
Can it be done by post or video call?
Yes. Post the page with a stamped envelope, or fill it in on a call and send a photo of the finished page. Long-distance is one of the best uses of it.
What do I receive when I buy it?
A PDF, downloaded instantly and printed as many times as you need. Nothing physical is shipped.
More family keepsake printables
This guide is part of our family keepsakes collection.