One of genealogy’s greatest rewards can come from imagining your ancestors at a particular point in history. But kids might need a little help tying their present lives to the past.
With the holidays coming up, households everywhere will be filled with multiple generations. It’s the perfect time to get your kids interested in their genealogy. Here are six simple things you can do to get your kids interested in researching their family story.
1. Tell stories.
For generations, family histories were oral histories. You can continue that tradition by telling stories about your ancestors to your descendants. Tell stories about them when they were your kids’ ages — your child is more likely to make a connection with the past when imagining a 10-year-old boy living on a homestead farm or an 8-year-old passing through Ellis Island. Before you begin your tale, you can consult historical resources that can provide additional details about immigrant life or pioneer days.
2. Interview older relatives. Older kids can deepen their family bonds and start developing their own personal history by interviewing older relatives. Ancestry has a great list of topics to interview older relatives about. Spend some time researching an era or event that the relative lived through, and then work with kids to develop questions. Encourage kids to use the latest technology they have on hand: digital cameras, iPhones, video recorders, scanners, and multimedia scrapbooking programs.
3. Travel with kids back in time. During summer vacation or winter school breaks, help kids relive the lives of their ancestors by taking them to places from your family’s past. Grandparents could tour their hometowns or old neighborhoods with their grandkids, showing them their old house, their church, or any place that holds special memories. If a visit to the old homestead isn’t possible, consider visiting a living history destination, such as a working historical farm or blacksmith shop. The visit can be especially fruitful if you’ve researched a forebear’s occupation and can see a reenactment of that. If you know where and how your family entered the United States, consider visiting those places, such as Ellis Island in New York.
4. Explore old newspaper articles together. To engage younger kids, consider exploring the millions of newspaper pages on Ancestry. Digitized articles from small-town newspapers may often be the only place to find pictures of your ancestors. A grandparent or great-grandparent might have been written up as a local hero, a returning war veteran, or just in everyday slices of life, ranging from school graduations to church events.
5. Make ancestor cards. If you already have pictures and a few facts about several ancestors, consider making ancestor cards for kids to play with. Each card can have a short bio, with the ancestor’s relationship to the child; the date and place of birth; date and place of death; the names of parents, spouses, and children; and, finally, a fact about that person that would be interesting to that child. Like baseball cards, kids can split up the cards and play games, like comparing the oldest ancestor.
6. Go on a cemetery hunt. If you’re near the final resting site of your long-departed ancestors, consider taking the kids on a cemetery hunt (even if you’re not near an ancestor’s cemetery, you can still visit one with old and interesting tombstones). The idea is to get the children interested in the lives of the people buried there. You can talk about historical events of note during different eras that dates on headstones fall into.
While kids shouldn’t touch tombstones that are wobbly or have crumbling surfaces, other tombstones can be examined and recorded with photographs. These can be interesting additions to the family scrapbook for future generations.