I want my children to share my passion for genealogy, and I try to share my research with them whenever I think I may have grabbed their attention. My three-year-old son accompanies me on most of my cemetery visits, and actually gets excited when I ask him if he wants to go for a walk in the cemetery. My nine-year-old daughter enjoys looking through my old family photos with me.
I am always looking for ways to involve my children in my genealogy, and often come up short when looking for ideas online. However, I have managed to come across some neat ideas that I thought I would pass on to you.
During the holidays, share your family traditions with your children. Even those traditions that are no longer kept up are important to share. Bring out old family photos you have of Christmas’, birthdays, and other holiday celebrations. Bake some holiday goodies using recipes your grandmother, or other family members, had. Sing old holiday songs, make homemade decorations, or engage in any other activity that your ancestors may have done to celebrate that season.
Use old family photos to create a scrapbook with your child. You may want to scan the photos into a computer and print out copies to use for this project. Share whatever information you know about the photos. Who are they of? Where were they taken? Is there a special even taking place? Using their own words, have your child write about the photo in their scrapbook.
Travel to places where your ancestors are from. While you probably won’t be able to accomplish any genealogical research during a vacation with your children, you can use the opportunity to visit cemeteries, homesteads, and other historical points that may broaden your children’s knowledge of who their ancestors were and how they lived.
If you have a teenager who is interested in genealogy, they may be interested in joining the GenTeen mailing list at GENTEEN-L-request@rootsweb.com. This is an email list for teenagers who are interested in learning more about genealogy, or have advice they would like to share with other teenage genealogists.