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...
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...
Need a fun activity to help your youth learn to research census records? "Finding Franklin" gives them the opportunity to discover the wealth of information that can be found in a census. Questions about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States lead the youth to find specifics about his family and occupation over a span of 48 years. They can then use the skills they've developed to find their own family in the census records. I created this to use with FamilySearch.org, but you could try it with Ancestry.com or MyHeritage.com also. Each website has different search boxes and filters, so...
Do you need a fun activity to help the youth in your ward get interested in family history? How about a Family Home Evening or Sunday activity for the whole family? Try MISSION POSSIBLE and see that it is possible to do family history! I created the MISSION POSSIBLE youth activity in response to Elder Anderson's Find, Take, Teach Challenge. Purpose We wanted to give the youth in our ward an opportunity to teach their families about family history. After discussing this in our family history committee, we decided to train the youth with FamilySearch.org and some of the great apps associated with...
Our ward family history committee, consisting of youth and adult consultants, planned this ward activity for all ages. Held on a Thursday evening it took the place of the combined activity for the young men and young women that week. Each organization had an assignment and each youth group ran one of the activities. One of our consultants did a fabulous job transforming the cultural hall into an old time country fair. Using the color theme of red, white, blue, and yellow, she displayed homemade quilts and added balloons and banners for a festive look. Table centerpieces consisted of bags...
