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Creative Ways for Children to Explore & Preserve Their
Own History
Keeping a Journal/Diary
Wouldn’t it be neat to read
one of your grandparent’s journals or even your great grandparent’s? You may
not be able to read theirs but you can keep your own journal for your
grandchildren and great grandchildren to read. Write about your personal
history such as what you think and feel. Also incorporate a few lines on
what you saw that day, what you read about, or heard on the local news, etc.
These things are all a part of history in the making and you can do your
part by recording it. If you don’t have a diary or journal already, you can
easily make your own. (See Making a Diary under Colonial Children’s
Games and Activities) If you need help getting started, head to your
local library or bookstore for books on keeping a journal. Try to write a
little bit each day or every other day. It will be real neat for you to go
back and read about your own history as well as amaze your descendants.
Playing
Detective with Photographs
Pictures
are worth a thousand words, so take some of your family’s old pictures (ones
before your time) and do some detective work. Ask the relatives who may know
a little bit more about the pictures the basic five questions: who, what,
when, where and why? For example, who is in the picture? What are the
relations between the people in the picture? When was the picture taken?
Where was the picture taken? Think of some more questions, you would like to
know. Write all these answers down and see if that information links to any
other information you have discovered about your family. Some pictures may
open a door to a new mystery about your family that you can try to solve!
Writing and sharing your
own story
In order to learn more
about your family and be creative with the information you have gathered,
you can write a story! One way to start off may be to focus on one
particular relative that really interests you. Do a little research about
him or her by interviewing them, reading their old diary, or asking other
family members about them. You can also start off with a time period of your
family’s lives or a place your family lived. Take your information and
define your focus of the story in order to help you select the important
facts to add to your story (you don’t want to put in everything!) The
goals of your story should be to, first, tell the reader what is unique
about your family and also, tell how your family shared experiences with
other people of the same era.
Your family history may
connect to other families and other historians. If people read your story,
it can offer a lead to their own family history. Scholars could find tales
about your family that can help bring historical study to life for others.
So your story must be an accurate, well-documented story and easy for others
to find it. To do so, make copies of your family story and send it to other
family members. Donate you story to your local library or historical
society. Use your computer skills to create your own family Internet site
featuring your story or add it to the My History website at
www.myhistory.org.
This project is a great way
to learn more about your own family story and offer what interesting facts
you learned to others. The long tedious process of creating a story will pay
off with you gaining a precious knowledge about your own family history.
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