Genealogy has been seen as a hobby for those who have retired and have nothing better to do with their time! It has also been seen as a rather boring hobby because it involves history.
Fortunately, events such as the television series Roots (based on the Alex Haley book) and the blockbuster film Titanic, launched renewed interest in one’s background. Today, genealogical society meetings are attended by people of various age groups, not just retired folks. Some schools also use family trees as a teaching aid in history classes. To keep this going, it is important that your children know what you are doing and why you are doing it.
Here are some fun ideas to get the youngsters involved:
* Celebrate an ancestor’s birthday: pick an ancestor that had something in common with your child e.g. a hobby, the same birth month, same names, etc... Find out what you can about this ancestor. Get background information about what life was like in that period. Do all of this with your child and end it off with a birthday cake.
* Pass on a family recipe that you got from your parents or grandparents. Make the time to cook or bake it with you child, talking about the person who gave you the recipe.
* Plot your ancestors on a large map. Mark each place where your ancestors once lived. It could show the countries or the towns. Each time you find another place, mark it together. Display the map where the children can see it.
* Visit a toy museum. Children find it interesting to see the toys that their ancestors played with.
* Make a family time-line. Help the child gather facts and stories about his/her parents, grandparents, etc... Collect photographs (or photocopies) of these people. Let the child write or type out the findings, a page for each person. Paste each photo on a sheet, label the sheet with the person’s details and tape the facts and stories to the bottom of the photo sheet. Hang the pages, in chronological order, with pegs on a line that you’ve put up. Make historical markers (like a bookmark), write an historical, local or world, date and event on each one. Hang these markers in the appropriate spaces in-between the photo pages.
* Create a family time capsule. Each family member places an item of his or her choice in the capsule. Make up lists of the family’s friends, favourite things, teachers, jobs, etc... and place them in the capsule. Store the capsule in a cupboard and one year later, repeat the project, this time adding the past year’s items and lists.
* Play family trivia. Especially suitable for times like Easter or Christmas when families tend to gather. Each family member writes a question on a piece of card. Make the questions by using Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. E.g. “Who was afraid of the tooth fairy?, “What item was brought from England with our ancestor”, “Where was the house with the yellow door?”, etc... Questions could be about amusing stories, interesting careers, etc... Keep the cards in a box and follow the rules of Trivial Pursuit! You can write the answers on other cards, so they can be passed on one day.