Ancestry Magazine

Get your kids involved in your family history quest with these suggestions.

By definition, genealogy is the study of family history—not that of one person or even a small group of people. All too often, however, only one member of a family pursues the hobby of genealogy. The other family members are content to sit back and watch, mildly bemused, as this one poor soul wanders about gathering ancestral information like some squirrel preparing for a hundred-year winter. But it doesn’t have to be this way—the entire family, especially children, can be involved in family history research.

This fact was made poignantly evident to us early in our teaching careers. At the beginning of a school year back in the early 1970s, we decided to incorporate genealogy into our curriculum. Since we taught French and U.S. history, genealogy made a wonderful cross-curricular topic, and we committed one class per week for a nine-week period to the pursuit of this project. We wanted our students to attempt to fill in a five-generation pedigree chart. After explaining the goals and objectives of our joint class project, we gave them their first assignment: at some point in the next week they were to interview an older relative (other than a parent) and record the family information they acquired on their pedigree charts and family group sheets. What followed changed our perception of genealogy forever. On Monday of the following week, one of Terry’s students gave her a note sealed in very attractive stationery.

“What’s this?” Terry asked.

“I dunno,” replied the student in typical teenage slur, “somethin’ my Nana wanted me to give you.”

Later that day, at lunch, Terry showed me the note. We exchanged looks, and right then we knew that genealogy was an ideal class project. More importantly, we knew it was an ideal family hobby. The note read:

“Dear Mrs. Willard,

I want to thank you for giving my granddaughter the assignment of interviewing me about our family history. We sat down after Sunday dinner and talked for over two hours about my parents and grandparents, about my life as a little girl growing up, and about how important a sense of family is. This was the first time she and I had ever really talked without the conversation being about gifts or money. I feel like we really got to know each other. We also have decided to keep working on this project together. Again, thank you and keep up the good work.

Sincerely,”

Later that week, when we brought our classes together for their joint class, we opted for a show-and-tell session in which the students shared their information-gathering experiences. The same young lady who had passed Terry the note was the first to volunteer. Her opening comment was one we will always remember. With the enthusiasm that only a freshman in high school can muster, she looked at her classmates and said, “Do you know what? My Nana really was a little girl once!”

Over the years we continued to use genealogy as a teaching tool, and it always produced similar results. Since then, in our travels around the country speaking to various societies and presenting workshops, we have gathered several other projects that can also be used to involve younger family members in genealogy. Here are a few of these ideas.

Family History Projects for Kids
1. The majority of people involved with genealogy today first developed a passionate interest in history as a young child, and often an older family member with a similar love fueled this interest. Perhaps the best suggestion we can make for involving younger people in the hobby of genealogy is for you, the family historian, to be the person who passes the torch to the next generation. Do this by making these younger people (your children, your grandchildren, your nieces and nephews) aware of what you’re doing. Explain your project. Interview them and include their stories as part of your family history project. Quite often we forget that children and young adults have stories to tell and that their stories will also be of interest to future generations.

2. A second method of involving younger family members is to make them aware of certain family traditions-including the origins of these traditions, if known. These traditions usually center on a special occasion and are memorable to young people because they tend to be in a heightened state of awareness at these events. Take advantage of their interest and involve them at the earliest age possible. Traditions are a true bridge to the past, and if young people learn that they are doing something their parents and grandparents did as youngsters, they immediately share something in common with these earlier generations. They feel connected. The true value of these traditions is evident when they get passed on to the next generation. We can’t count the wonderful stories we’ve heard of families going out to cut Christmas trees together, working together by volunteering in a soup kitchen at Thanksgiving, or decorating the graves of departed loved ones on Memorial Day. If your family does not have any traditions, sit down with the younger generation and invent some that they can feel a part of.

3. A third suggestion for involving younger family members is for you to capitalize on their almost intuitive understanding of the personal computer. Have a young person “help” you surf the Internet and gather information pertaining to your research. We put “help” in quotation marks because we feel they can help you even if you are computer-literate and are perfectly capable of doing it yourself. The important thing is to get them involved in a way that they will find meaningful. It is entirely possible that they will bring a fresh new slant to your research and, who knows, they might even uncover information that you are totally unaware of. Both you and the younger person would feel the satisfaction of this discovery.

4. For younger school-age children (kindergarten through grade 2), creating a time capsule is something they can really become involved with. One of the most interesting commercially available products we have seen is My First School Year Time Capsule Kit, published by The Original Time Capsule Company of Greenfield, Indiana. Each suggestion in the kit is one that this age group can identify with, from including pictures of themselves and their classmates to putting in samples of their schoolwork. Imagine the excitement they would feel as the date approached for them to open their time capsules and examine the contents. Likewise, think of the valuable understanding they’ll gain in terms of using evidence to reconstruct the past, even if it is their own past they’re reconstructing.

5. For slightly older children (grades 3 through 5), an activity sure to pique their interest is a project centered on researching the family’s coat of arms. While not every family has a crest, every child can create a crest for his or her own family. By developing an understanding of family crests, eight-to-ten-year-olds can easily identify certain traits that are reflective of their own families. They can then represent these traits pictorially on a crest of their own making. To help students understand this process, we recommend Design Your Own Coat of Arms by Rosemary A. Chorzempa, published by Dover Publications of New York. We have always been amazed at how creative young people can be in designing shields for their families. Some have used their computers and created family stationery, envelopes, and even decorative T-shirts using their self-designed coats of arms.

6. For middle-school-age students (grades 6 through 8), encouraging them to create genealogy-related projects suitable for display at school, district, or state history fairs is an excellent way of getting them involved in family history. One of the memorable projects we have seen was when a young lady dressed mannequins in a clothing style she copied from a photo of her great-grandparents. Another student created a graphic medical pedigree detailing the causes of death of her ancestors and presented this information in an easy-to-understand format. A third student used pictures of his ancestors to create a mobile, with each tier representing a different generation. Given the opportunity, middle school students can be quite creative, and an experience of this sort is one they will always remember.

By involving younger family members in a family history project, the family historian is making his or her own family past come alive in ways not thought possible. Who knows? Your granddaughter might even learn that you were a young girl once!

Terry and Jim Willard hosted the ten-part PBS series Ancestors. They have researched their genealogy fifteen generations back on both sides.