18 Home Remedies: Grandma Knows Best

Note: Traditional remedies will vary from culture to culture. If you have a group of students from different cultural backgrounds, you will probably end up with a fascinating list of home remedies.

Tell students that, in the past, access to drugs and medication was not as easy as it is today, and that our great-grandmothers and grandmothers often had a home remedy to treat common illnesses.

Together with the group, make a list of some common illnesses such as: a cold, hiccups, sore throat, diarrhea, an upset stomach, fever, headache, etc.

My personal experience: When my son was a baby, he was spending a weekend on his grandparents’ farm when he started coughing. My mother-in-law (my son’s grandma) roasted a lizard, ground it, made some tea, and gave it to the baby, who actually got better.

Here are some examples from Brazilian culture:

1. For hiccups: Get a red thread (and it has to be red!), moisten it with your saliva (it has to be saliva!) and place it on the child’s forehead.
2. For a toothache: Have the person chew a clove of garlic.
3. For constipation: Cook some beets and save the water that remained in the pan after cooking them. Drink the water.
4. Warts: Cover the wart with adhesive tape and keep the tape on for 3 days. Remove the adhesive tape and rub the affected area carefully with pumice stone. Repeat this procedure every 3 days until the wart is gone.

Assign an illness to each student. Alternatively, you may assign more than one or place students in groups and distribute a group of illnesses to each group.

The student (or groups of students) will need to go online and research traditional home remedies for each one of the illnesses or, if possible, interview older relatives.

Students present their findings to the class and prepare a folder with all the information they have collected. Don’t forget to ask them to create a cover for the folder.