Would you like to have your children, or grandchildren, get interested in genealogy? There is a new, and easy, way to spark their interest. It is a website called Family Tree Kids. It is designed to let children explore their family relationships in a way that makes it easier to understand.
Genealogists sometimes think about their great great great grandparents. They find joy in figuring out the often complex relationships between one ancestor in their family tree and a relative who is alive today. Is that relative your first cousin, your third cousin, or your first cousin once removed? These puzzles are the type of things that make genealogy interesting, challenging, and fun.
It is this complexity that can be overwhelming for young children. Most kids like to hear family stories about relatives and ancestors that were alive long before the child hearing the story was born. Kids can become really confused by all the kinship terms that genealogists use, but might still want to know more about how, exactly, they are related to all those people.
A new website called Family Tree Kids could be exactly what the budding genealogist in your family needs! It is free to use, and you don’t have to register before your child or grandchild can access the stuff that is included in this website.
It has a family tree form that you can download. The form can also be opened up with Adobe Reader as a PDF file. There are boxes a child can fill in. Kids can fill in the names of their aunt, uncle, grandfather, great grandfather, and more. An adult can help them fill in the information that they do not know.
There is also a section of the website called “Family Tree Fun”. It uses genealogy words in a word scramble and a word search. It also has a game where you can make picture magnets. Kids can also play with the Family Detective portion of the website, which gives them suggestions for activities that they can do offline that will help them to learn more about their ancestors and living relatives.
Family Tree Kids is offered by the Family Tree Magazine website. The magazine has plenty of online information for adult genealogists. It also offers genealogy classes through its Family Tree University, and has a monthly podcast that genealogists can download and listen to for free!
Image by Childrens Book Review on Flickr