Have you ever seen a complete date and place for an ancestor's birth, death, or marriage, but no source is attached as proof? Have you wondered where that information originated? With the proliferation of online trees and copying of data, tracing a genealogy fact back to an original posting can help verify or disprove it. Two websites can be explored to find complete family tree submissions: Rootsweb and FamilySearch Genealogies. Rootsweb When Nicole and I first began our research journey in 2003, we built our family tree in Personal Ancestral File (PAF), a computer database that let us add source...
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...
Last year, my grandmother planned a reunion for her ten children and 50+ grandchildren. I asked her if we could include some family history activities during the week and do a "family tree gathering," so she put me in charge of Family Home Evening on Monday night. I wanted to plan an activity that all the adults would enjoy and even the smallest children could be involved in too. After giving it some thought, I decided that acting out our family stories would be perfect. Preparation A few weeks in advance, we asked each of the ten families to choose an ancestral couple, read stories about...
Have you been trying to involve your teenagers and children in your family history efforts to no avail? Try devoting a wall in your home to family history and see if you can spark some interest. In 2000, our family had outgrown our small starter home and we moved into a house with twice the square footage. With all that space came a lot of empty walls. I hadn't started actively researching my ancestors yet, but I wanted my children to start feeling some connections. I decided to make a family history wall. My starting point was the purchase of an...
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...
Our ward Christmas party was a nativity display. We decided to create a family history display in one of the rooms with Christmas family traditions and ideas from the FamilySearch Christmas campaign, 5 Ideas for Creating Cherished Memories this Christmas Season. The second idea on the list was to create ancestor photo ornaments, so I decorated a small Christmas tree with a bunch of photo ornaments. There are a lot of ways to make photo ornaments, from modge podging photos onto wood coasters to creating your own paper frame, but it doesn't need to be complicated! Here are two easy ideas....
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...
So you want to teach your children about great aunts, first cousins once removed, and great-grandfathers? Here is a list of books that will help you explain the sometimes tricky concept of family trees. This post contains affiliate links. If you click the link and make a purchase, we receive a small commission, but it doesn't change the price of the item. Thank you! What a Family by Rachel Isadora, 2006 What a Family highlights characteristics and physical traits that people have in common with their family members. It shows a large descendancy family tree chart with cousins names and birth...
