Family History

What a better way to learn about history than by talking to those who actually lived through it? I have been working on my other passion, scrapbooking. I love scrapbooking. For Christmas I have taken all the old pictures from my grandma and scanned them into my computer to give my mom, aunts, grandma, and cousins a special gift for Christmas. Their dad, my grandpa, passed away when I was only 8 years old so close to 20 years ago. Many of my cousins don't remember him at all. So I have taken all the pictures I have been able to find of him and am writing a children's book to help them get to know the grandpa they never did. Through this process I have learned so much about my grandpa and where he came from. Things that I never knew before like that he joined the air force so he wouldn't be drafted into the army and that is where his love of air planes came from. Just little things that no one had ever thought to tell me.

When I taught my goal was to have a classroom timeline that showed what was happening when in history. Knowing about your own history just makes that timeline really come alive. I can say that my grandpa fought in the Vietnam war, my Grandma lived through the end of the great depression, and my Great Grandparents survived through WWII. This has helped me want to learn more about what was happening in these time periods so I know what my ancestors were going through.

Here are a few game ideas to help get your kids excited about history and why learning about it is important.

1. Write a children's book about an ancestor that was living at the time of the event. I just wrote one about my husband's 4th great aunt and it has become a family treasure.

2. Create a jeopardy or quiz show game using historical facts from different family member's pasts. There are websites that you can use to help create this. I prefer to just use Power Point or paper and poster board.

3. Create a Family History Board Game. You can gear this toward the topics they need to know for a history test with questions like "When your 3rd great grandpa was immigrating to America what island did he need to stop at in New York before he could enter? Ellis Island

History should be fun to learn about, not just a list of facts and dates. It's a story about those who came before. One of my favorite quotes says "Lessons of the past help us meet the challenges of the future." Let's make sure our kids know their past and where they came from and who fought to get them where they are today.