Family history has been growing in popularity and chances are many of you have been hit with the genealogy bug: the desire to know more about your ancestors, who they were and the lives that they led. So why not share this information with your children. Give your children a chance to learn of their heritage and the great and not so great things their forbearers did.
Start with your child’s or your grandparents. My grandpa died right after I was married and my grandma just after the birth of my second child. My son has faint memories of her but none of my children knew my grandpa. They were great people and I want to share their lives with my children.
I also have a short record of many of my great-grandparents and even further back to great-great-great grandparents. These stories are priceless treasures of faith, endurance, and even comedy. I love sharing these stories with my children. It reminds them and me to honor our family name as those before us did.
To start sharing your family history with your children can be as simple as relating an event that happened to an ancestor while you are driving, doing chores, or gathered around the table. Of course this means that you have to be familiar enough with the stories to share them. My children love hearing about when my grandma was a girl and her goat got inside the house and was found standing on her mother’s bed about to butt the goat in the mirror.
Try setting aside one night each month and celebrate a certain ancestor. You could eat their favorite food or a dish from the country of their birth and share stories about the person. Having a picture of the person or object that they owned makes the person seem more real. You might want to choose the month that your ancestor was born and make it a birthday celebration.