Blog – Page 51 – Family Locket

Picturing your Pedigree with Puzzilla.org

Today I want to share one of my favorite apps from the FamilySearch app gallery - Puzzilla! Puzzilla.org reads the data on your family tree and creates a compact, bird's eye view of your pedigree. This is interesting for viewing your ancestors, but it's incredible for viewing descendants. There is no better way to visualize your cousins than to see them plotted out in a Puzzilla descendancy chart. As you view cousins in this new way, it's simpler to spot gaps in the research and find new places to work. For those who want to find names for temple work,...

By Nicole Dyer November 17, 2015 Creating and Sharing Family History, FamilySearch Apps, LDS Family History 2 Comments

“I Have a Family Tree with Branches by the Dozen”: Primary Sharing Time Ideas

Need a way to involve your youth family history consultants? How about introducing family history to children from three to eleven? We combined both of these objectives with a Primary Sharing Time! In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the organization for children age three to eleven is called Primary. As part of our Sunday worship, the children have classes for their individual age groups then come together for Sharing Time. Sharing time can include music, stories, hands-on activities and much more. Because of the age range of the children, we planned different activities for the younger children...

By Diana Elder November 8, 2015 LDS Family History, Youth and Primary No Comments

A Regular Part of our Personal Worship

In October 2014 General Conference, Elder Allan F. Packer spoke about family history in his talk, "The Book." He said, Like partaking of the sacrament, attending meetings, reading the scriptures, and saying personal prayers, doing family history and temple work should be a regular part of our personal worship. He spoke about this on February 14, 2015 at the Family Discovery Day as well: Last year, our theme was “Igniting Interest in Family History,” and we introduced the “spiritual passport,” which encouraged members to begin collecting the stories and information that would help them and their ancestors qualify for eternal...

By Nicole Dyer November 4, 2015 General Conference, LDS Family History No Comments

Getting to Know Your Mormon Pioneer Ancestor: Seven Steps to Success

Do you have pioneer ancestors who joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) in the 1800's and came west to join the saints in Zion? The LDS church began emphasizing family history about 1890, so you may think that those branches of your family tree are complete and accurate. Just looking at your fan chart on FamilySearch's Family Tree, it might seem that there are no more family members to discover. In reality, our pioneer lines may be reasonably accurate up to a point, but the dates, places, and relationships are often based on family knowledge and...

By Diana Elder October 25, 2015 FamilySearch Memories, LDS Family History, Research Tips 2 Comments

Family Tree Explorers

Our stake has been focused on teaching the primary children ages 8-11 how to do family history, and our youth consultants are taking charge of teaching them. So I created a lesson plan for our youth family history consultants to use as they teach at the children's homes. The lesson invites the children to become explorers and discover their family's past. Four tools from an "explorer's backpack" are used to explain family history concepts. The compass teaches the children to get started in the right direction by creating an account on FamilySearch.org. The map is used to teach children about...

By Nicole Dyer October 22, 2015 Families and Children, LDS Family History, Youth and Primary No Comments

Searching vs. Surfing for A Name

Our ward is working on a temple challenge to find a family name for temple work by the end of November. I think it's important to talk about the difference between searching for a name and surfing for a name. Searching: Finding records that reveal relatives not yet in Family Tree. Adding them to the tree, checking for duplicates, and reserving their ordinances. Surfing: Clicking around family tree until you find a relative with a green temple icon, then reserving their temple ordinances. When I really search for records about my ancestors, instead of just surfing for green temple icons, these ancestors start to...

By Nicole Dyer October 18, 2015 Families and Children, LDS Family History, Youth and Primary No Comments

What Do I Do Next? 5 Tips for Using FamilySearch Partners

Not sure what to do with the Family Search Partners that now appear on the Person page of Family Search? Have you clicked on one of them for fun and been completely overwhelmed with the amount of information you see? Or were you underwhelmed with the lack of relevant information returned? Because of FamilySearch's partnership with Ancestry, Find My past, and MyHeritage, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have access to free LDS accounts. If you have not registered for the partner websites, go to familysearch.org/partneraccess and create your free accounts. Keep your log-in information handy because you'll need...

By Diana Elder October 16, 2015 FamilySearch FamilyTree, Research Tips 5 Comments

6 Children’s Books About Family History

This post contains affiliate links. If you click the link and purchase the item, we receive a small commission. This doesn't change the price of the item. Homeplace by Anne Shelby, 1995 A Grandmother tells her granddaughter the story of the home she lives in, starting 100 years before with the girl's 4th great grandfather who built the house. The Jan Brett-like illustrations with lots of farm imagery invoke a very homey, country feeling. Each generation builds onto the "homeplace" and improves the property. Each generation is introduced by saying "ONE of the babies was your..." This book is filled with planting...