Alexis Maurer who writes the blog The Adventures of the Baby Genealogist is sharing a guest blog post about family history for children. I'm excited for you to hear her great ideas! She does a lot of fun things to teach her small children about family history. -Nicole There is a power in connecting with another person. When we create that special bond in our families, our children and grandchildren are affected for the better. Letter writing can be a powerful way to connect. I feel it is slowly becoming a lost art to actually take the time to write something...
The recording of "Families Discovering Family History Together," my RootsTech 2019 presentation with Olivia Jewell and Jana Greenhalgh was just released on the RootsTech Video Archive page. I loved preparing for this class and presenting it with two other moms who are just as passionate about sharing family history with our children and families as I am. Check out Olivia's blog here: Liv's Treehouse and Jana's blog here: The Genealogy Kids. I talked about my five-year-old daughter's experience finding strength from her brave female ancestors during an ER visit, our farmer ancestor role play experience, and making felt family trees...
During RootsTech, Nicole and I had the opportunity to sit down with Mike Sandberg from FamilySearch and learn more about the new In-Home Activities page that he and his team designed. This was a project that took two years to develop. It all began with a council about the best way to get families involved in family history. Elder Ian S. Ardern of the Seventy suggested that “it all starts with a conversation.” Figuring out how to get more family members involved in conversations about their family was the first step. Brother Sandberg added that the job of doing family...
I'm excited to introduce our new guest blogger, Alice Childs. Alice is a temple and family history consultant for her stake in Highland, Utah. Her passion for helping consultants succeed led to the creation of her blog, Souls to Bless, where she regularly posts ideas and inspiration for Temple and Family History Consultants from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. - Nicole A few years ago, my daughter was assigned to complete the Meyers-Briggs personality test for a high school psychology class. After the students had completed the test, the teacher grouped the students according to personality types...
Children can help their families find names for the temple and learn how to navigate the FamilySearch Family Tree at the same time! Here is a worksheet for children to use as they search for icons in FamilySearch. I made this worksheet for a one-day family history camp for children at the Tucson Family History Center. My friend organized the event for the primary children in her stake. This was just one of the stations the children visited that day. They completed the worksheet with the help of youth family history consultants. Click here to download a PDF of the...
This post is part of the #FHforChildren Linkup, “Learning Family History Through Play.” My children love to dress up and pretend, so I've been brainstorming ways to teach them about the past as they pretend. Role playing is a fun way to learn how people work. From doctors to train conductors, kids love imitating the occupations of grown ups. I thought this would be a good way to teach them about our farming ancestors. Were any of your ancestors farmers? It seems like almost everyone descends from farmers. Agriculture was the way of life for almost everyone 200 years ago....
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...
Family History is for Everyone: Becky Villareal, Teacher and Children's Book Author When should a child start to learn about their family's history? Nicole and I believe it's never too early. We are passionate about sharing family history with children and love to meet other's who share our sentiments. We recently connected with retired elementary school teacher and author, Becky Villareal, who has written a series of children's books aimed at interesting them in learning about their families. I recently read Becky's charming first book, Gianna the Great. A former 4th grade teacher, I pictured students reading the story and being...
I have a great family history activity for children to share today - teaching children to find names for the temple by doing family history research with historical records! The activity was created by Alana Anderson. Alana lives in an LDS stake near me in Tucson. She is an activity day leader and did the Finding Franklin Time Machine Activity with her group. It went so well, that she decided to create a "Family History Mystery" activity to take it a step further with her own family, and share it at her stake activity days event. The girls and their...
Today is the first day of our new family history for children blog link up. This one will last three months and be all about learning family history through play. Experts agree that children learn best when they are playing. What fun ways have you shared family history with children? How do your children like to play? My son enjoys dressing up and pretending. My daughter loves playing with Play-Doh and doing crafts. We have experimented with many different ways of sharing family history with them through the way they like to play. We've taught my son about his cowboy...
