Genealogy is a great topic for adults and children alike. If you are a parent who is homeschooling your children, you may want to include some family history lessons in your curriculum. There are quite a few ways that you can do this, and there are options available for children of all ages.
One fun way to explore your family’s heritage is to make a family scrapbook. There are so many fun scrapbooking supplies available, and when you add these to the boxes and boxes of old photos that you have sitting around, you have the makings of something great. A good way to begin is by helping the kids fill out a decorative pedigree chart. There are many fun designs that you can find for free online, and the kids will have fun helping you choose one.
You may need to do some research to fill out the branches of your family tree, so if the kids are old enough to understand basic genealogy research, teach them how to locate the necessary information at the library or on the internet. In fact, older students that have a strong interest in genealogy could do more in-depth study about the different records used in family history research. Also, an older student with an interest in writing and genealogy could combine those two interests and write a family history book. If your children are younger and there is not a huge amount of research to do, they can tag along on a trip to the library and pretend that they are “family history detectives” helping you look for clues to solve the mystery of their family tree.
The pedigree chart that you complete together can become the first page of your family history scrapbook, a table of contents of sorts. Next, the kids can help sort through pictures of their relatives so that they can put the pictures together on a page for each person. As you make each page, take the time to teach your children about who the faces in the photographs are. They are sure to enjoy learning about Grandpa’s travel overseas during his military years or how Great Grandmother came to America with her parents and built a new life from scratch. These stories and other fun facts about family can be hand written or typed and added to the pages of the scrapbook. When the children are finished with their family history masterpiece, be sure to bring it along to the next family gathering so that they can show their relatives what they have accomplished.