Shenley Puterbaugh is the founder of the website inspirefamilyhistory.com. I had the pleasure of meeting her at RootsTech! She is sharing a guest blog post today about how to help children have a discovery experience in family history. I bet you’ll get at least one fresh idea to try from her post. Check out her great ideas at inspirefamilyhistory.com as well! About Shenley Shenley was inspired to love family history when her mom told her stories and helped her diagram her family tree when she was a child. Since then, she has spent countless hours researching, interviewing relatives, digging through...
Today I’m sharing a guest post from Charlotte Barnes, author of the new book Turning Little Hearts: Over 90 Activities tot Connect Children with their Ancestors. Charlotte is sharing a fun idea for teaching children about the character traits of ancestors by creating a man out of a paper bag! This easy activity takes minimal time to set up and provides an opportunity to learn about ancestors in an engaging way. To watch a video of Charlotte’s family doing this activity, click here. – Nicole Share Ancestor Character Traits with Kids: A Simple Activity by Charlotte Barnes In a rare, quiet...
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...
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...
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...
What skills do genealogists use? How can we teach them to children in an age appropriate way? This month’s #FHforChildren blog link up is all about teaching kids to do genealogy research. Theme: Teaching Children Genealogy Skills What are the core skills of genealogy that children can learn from a young age? What age would you start teaching these at and how do you do so with your children? Share your ideas for teaching kids how to do genealogy. Here are some ideas for posts: Handouts or other printable that help children learn a genealogy skill Activities or lessons that...
A couple years ago, I made photo felt family trees for my nephews and niece for Christmas. I glued velcro to the back of each circle so the kids could move the family members on and off of the family tree and play. This is a wonderful teaching aid or storytelling aid that I use often when I’m teaching children about family history and relationships to ancestors. I wrote a tutorial for making your own photo family tree here, Felt Family Tree – Interactive Activity for Kids, but for those of you who are not interested in doing all the...
