Genealogy is a fascinating and inexpensive hobby that can be used to enrich your homeschool classes. When you've finished, (not that you're ever finished with genealogy), you have a wonderful family history to hand down through the generations, and experience in a number of school subjects. This article will show you how to incorporate genealogy into your homeschool and give you resources for learning the necessary skills. The project involves more than finding ancestors. You will be creating a family history that will help the children pass on their own lives to the future. We start with ourselves and work backwards.
You may want to start by having children read journals by other people, and discuss with them the value of a journal. Ask your librarian to recommend both fiction and nonfiction books written as journals. Older children might want to read "Diary of Anne Frank" and discuss how this book helps us to learn about the time in which Anne lived and about the ways it affects our feelings about the historical events. Then help your children start their own journals. They can keep them on a computer (but print out hard copies), in a three ring binder, or in a store bought blank book. Don't buy the books with dated pages. Help them to see that journal entries are more than what you ate for dinner. They should record events that are important to them, their feelings, current events and details of their daily life-anything someone may want to know about them someday. They can also record what they want to remember. When I look back at my old journals, I'm amazed at who I was then and how I felt about the world. I remembered junior high as wonderful and fun, but it was actually a challenging two years for me. Without the journals, the growth I experienced during that time would have been lost. Little children can dictate an entry and then draw a picture of their report. My children love to go back and read their preschool journals. One of my children describes her new baby sister as her favorite toy. All three described their imaginary friends in great detail.
For children who experience regular bouts of writer's block, try creating journal jars. Many of the girls in our church make them. They are old jars the girls decorate. They place in them slips of paper with ideas for journal entries: a happy memory, a description of best friends, a review of major news topics of the day and so on. The girls can draw from these when they are stuck.
After the children are comfortable with journal writing (don't forget to give them English credit for this) you can have them start writing a personal history. Take your time and do a little each week. You can start a page for each age and do the history in order or as ideas occur to you. If ideas occur in a disconnected fashion, they can be edited into a coherent report later. One fun way to do this for younger children is to read the book, "The Hundred Penny Jar." A woman has a jar with a penny dated from each year of her life. Help the children collect pennies for each day of their own life. Then mount the penny on stiff cardboard cut into pages and fastened with string. Under each penny, have the children tell about that year. You may need to offer assistance.
You may want to add pictures or souvenirs to each page to make a fascinating record for the future. Have the children make suggestions as to how to decorate or organize each page.
You may want to compile a history of your lives as a family as well. Try starting with how you and your spouse met and go through to the current date. Every year on New Year's Day, start a tradition of updating your histories. It's a fun way to review the last year. Finish off by recording your goals for the next year and checking to see how many of last year's resolutions you kept.
Now you're ready to start working on ancestors. It would take too long to tell you how to research your history, so I will just get you to the right sources and then tell you how to fit it into your school day.
You can purchase good genealogy programs at most computer stores. These can really simplify your work. You can also buy inexpensive starter supplies in many places, including LDS bookstores. The Mormons are well-known for their genealogy work, and they have free genealogy libraries in most stake center. (Not every church building is a stake center.) If you look in your phone book under Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is the correct name for the church, you will usually find the genealogy library listed. Many have limited hours and days, because they are staffed by volunteers, but they are open to the public. You do not have to be a member and no one will try to convert you. I've heard more non-members use our libraries than members. The volunteers are well trained and will be happy to help you get started. You should come with any information you already have.
Start by having your children write their names, birth dates, and place of birth. Then they will record this information for each of their parents, plus marriage dates and places, and death dates and places. Follow back as far as you can go. This gives you your basic lineage. Then create family group sheets. You can buy these and other forms at LDS genealogy libraries or bookstores. You can also make your own. On your family group sheet, list at the top the mother and father of a family, even if they later divorced. Record all the information you put on that first lineage chart. Then list every child in the family and the names, dates and places you have for them. If there was more than one marriage, make an additional sheet for the other marriages. Children are listed on the sheet containing both their parents.
You may want to give each person a number and cross-reference them on their various sheets. Note what other sheets they are on, by also numbering the sheets.
Okay, enough on this. It is very hard to explain on a page without graphics, and other sites do it better. Let's go on to figuring out how to use this for school. At the end of the article, I will include a list of links to other sites.
The writing up of each child's history, is of course, English. The journals are also English. They might want to do oral histories of older relatives, and that is both English and History.
History is where you can really do some interesting things with genealogy. If you are studying a time period in which you have discovered relatives, do research into the time and place they are from. The Civil War seems very impersonal to us, but if you had relatives in it, the war suddenly has something to do with you. My ancestors were from Ohio and Kentucky, both border states, and we had soldiers on both sides. Many families sent half their sons to the South, and half to the North, hoping that if one side destroyed the other, they might not lose all their sons. Brothers were literally fighting brothers in our family. Suddenly that information becomes alive. How did they decide which brother went where? Did they really develop loyalties for the sides they were fighting for? How did it affect their relationships after the war? These are no longer anonymous soldiers grouped together as soldiers in a textbook. They were family!
How did your relatives get here to your home country? Many of mine came from Ireland. After checking some books, we realized the years they arrived were during the potato famine-right near the end, actually. First the man came over. The next year, his wife came over, and they were married shortly thereafter. Were they engaged before she came? Did he come first to save money before he sent for her or did they meet here? How did they feel when the famine ended not long after they came here? Did they wish they had waited? Where and how would we be living if they had not come? (My mother's family came from Germany, so my parents might not have met.) Help children realize they live here only because someone else made the difficult decision to leave their homeland and come here. Read some books-fiction and nonfiction on children who immigrate.
Try writing stories about your ancestors, or try writing your guesses about them to supplement what you learn. Try scrapbooking for art, or doing a study of the countries your ancestors came from. Trying learning the language of your ancestors. Hold birthday parties to celebrate the birthdays of your ancestors. Remember to count the time spent researching as school hours. Research is an important skill in every subject. The trick to expanding it is to learn about the times and places your family came from.
Make a page for each family. Write everything you know about them, and then learn about the time and place in which they lived. Have children write about the foods, the schools, the lifestyles, and the current events of the time. Have them draw pictures of the clothes and homes. Let them write about an imaginary day in the lives of their ancestors.
Have fun meeting your expanded family!