FamilySearch.org offers many ways to discover ancestors. Below is a list of the email campaigns and discovery activities that FamilySearch has created to help users discover interesting facts about ancestors, including their occupations, obituaries, headstones, and how much we look like our ancestors. Many of these activities are perfect for youth activities or for helping children become acquainted with ancestors for the first time. How does it work? If you have an account with FamilySearch and have added your parents, grandparent, and linked in to ancestors in the collaborative family tree, then you will be able to make discoveries with...
Looking for a fun activity for children that helps them learn how to use FamilySearch.org? When children look at an online family tree for the first time, it is helpful for them to learn how to navigate around and see what information they can find out about their ancestors. This scavenger hunt does just that! With little clues like, "find a relative with an unusual name" or "find a woman who had more than ten children," the scavenger hunt will pique their curiosity and help them get used to using FamilySearch. This scavenger hunt can be used with children ages...
I recently helped with a neighboring stake's Family Discovery Day. I was delighted to be contacted about it. We came up with family history ideas to keep the children busy for 3 hours while their parents attended the classes. I was just one of the people who helped, and each person who did had unique and wonderful ideas. The kids all had a great time! My friend who was teaching an adult class heard a girl tell her mother, "I thought it was going to be boring, but it was so fun!" Let me tell you about it. The stake...
We had the best time yesterday doing this inter-generational heirloom activity. What objects from the past have you kept because they have special meaning to you? What has been passed down in your family? Do your children know about them? Kids and families can work together on this heirloom hunt to learn about the heirlooms in their family. My son recently interviewed his grandparents over video chat to fill out his inherited traits chart. We were learning so much and laughing so much. He loved talking with them about his hitchhiker's thumb that he shares with Daddy, and learning about the...
LDS General Conference is coming up! Here are two free, printable activities you can do with your kids using photos of the general authorities as children. As you know, I love making coloring pages of our family and ancestors from photos, so I thought this would be a fun way to do the same for a conference activity to help my kids learn that the apostles were kids once, too. Have you read Kid Presidents? I would love to see a "Kid Prophets" or similar book with stories of the prophets and apostles as children. (Maybe one already exists.) Children...
For May, the Family Locket Book Club for Kids is reading "Me and My Family Tree" by Joan Sweeney, illustrated by Annette Cable. We are sharing two family tree projects to do along with reading and discussing the book. This post contains affiliate links. If you click the links and make a purchase, we receive a small commission but it doesn't change the price of the item. Kids love learning about their place in the world. Joan Sweeney's other books, Me on the Map, Me and My Amazing Body, Me and the Measure of Things, Me Counting Time: From Seconds to...
For this month's Kids' Book Club we're reading Loreen Leedy's book, Who's Who in My Family Tree? It's perfect for teaching kids about family tree diagrams, second cousins, great uncles, and great grandparents, and you can even create a fun family tree when you're done reading. Who’s Who in My Family? By Loreen Leedy (This is an affiliate link. If you click the link and purchase the item, we receive a small commission but it doesn't change the price of the item.) Grades PreK-3 Who’s Who in My Family is about students in Ms. Fox’s class cutting, gluing, creating family trees and sharing them with the...
Need a way to share family stories with your kids more often? How about coloring pages? Every so often, we create a coloring page about one of our grandparents. While my son was coloring one of his Great Grandpa Elder today, he remembered that Great Grandpa passed away last year. He talked about missing him and wondered what he looked like when he was younger. As he thought about it, he colored this picture of Grandpa in the army. We talked about Grandpa's life and some of the stories he told. Ready to make your own? Many photo editing programs have a way to convert...
Do you look like one of your grandparents? Do you have one of their dresses or coats? Then you might have fun doing this photo challenge from www.makefamilyhistory.org : recreate an ancestor photo. My daughter Alice now has my pink baby sweater knitted by my Grandma. I showed her a picture of me wearing the sweater and she instantly wanted to put it on. We pulled a mini Christmas tree out of storage and... done! We recreated the photo. Want to see some more? Check out their Recreate an Ancestor Photo Instagram challenge page. It shows the winners of their contest from last year....
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...
