Holiday Ideas for Creating Family History Projects

This is the time of year when we gather with our families and close friends and community to celebrate the holidays. It’s a special time of year often accompanied by many traditions, some of them passed down many generations, some of them new as we blend families or add new family members who may have come from other cultures. The cool thing about traditionshttp://boomaration.ning.com/profiles/blog/new# is that we’re the ones that get to pick how we’re going to celebrate; what foods we’ll eat, what games we’ll play, how gifts will be distributed and what stories we will tell.

Another annual tradition is me writing a blog, a newsletter article or speaking publicly about how important it is to take advantage of the fact that friends and family are together and you have the perfect opportunity to work on your family history now!

Believe me, I understand how easy it is to get swept up in the shopping, and cooking and celebrating. Taking time to actually create opportunities for family members to talk about their past or their futures takes a bit of planning. But honestly, it’s not that much work and there’s so many great things that you can do.

So here are a few of my favorite ideas:

1. My favorite thing is to get kids involved in documenting family history. Buy a bunch of disposable cameras and give each child (obviously not the very young ones) a camera and a pad of paper and pen, and assign them a relative to photograph and interview. Perhaps mention something they may have in common with that relative. If your son is into football and your grandfather was the high school quarterback, let your son ask him questions about his sports career and how that shaped his life. You may need to coach each kid and give them some specific questions to ask their assigned interviewee but I guarantee you that by the time they are done, each will know and understand the other a bit better.