How would you go about teaching this?

[LTBernard]

I asked my DS(6) what he would like to study next year for Science and History.  He said things that are alive for Science and so I am going to get a life science curriculum of some kind, that is part of a whole other thread so not asking about that here.

For History he said he wants to study our family history.  I thought about this and I would love to be able to do it.  I have always been interested in genealogy myself.  I just don't know how to actually teach it as a history class.  Typically in a history class you start with the older info and move toward more current.  I think with this it would be better to start with more current and work back.  But most of the people in our family tree I don't know much more than basic dates and places for.  I thought about talking about what kind of big things were going on while the particular people were alive, but with all the branches most everything that has happened would have happened while someone from our tree was live.  If I could talk about only the big events that our ancestors actually took part in, but that would pretty much limit us to discussing wars.  I am not opposed to discussing wars, but would like to talk about more than just that.  Ideas?

[IsabelC]

If you are planning on covering a more WTM-like history progression later on, you could consider doing this topic from a different perspective, which would make a lovely complement to his overall understanding of history. I have noticed that in SOTW, for example, it's very much focused on "Look! Here's a famous leader. This is the country/empire he had, and he fought such and such wars." There is not much said about what life was like for ordinary people at that time. So if you could look at your family tree and talk about the experienced that his ancestors had, you could then slot them in when you "come back" to that time, so that when your son is learning the bigger picture about the depression or WWII you can remind him that was the war that Great Grandpa so-and-so was in, or whatever. You could even add people from your family tree to a timeline if you do one.

[jar7709]

See if you can find a copy of "My Backyard History Book" by Weitzman. Pretty cheap used. It has some great ideas for studying local and family history.

[Arcadia]

How about migration? My grandparents migrated from China to SE Asia because of famine. We moved to the states for work.

When we did ancients we basically rope in more books about China's history and culture. My oldest was curious about inventions of any race/ethnicity in history so we did more on that. Wars was just a passing read in that he knew the causes but we didn't delve deep.

[Maus]

I'd probably work from the present backwards, too. It is more real, I think, to say, "the year you were born," "when Mom was a girl."

 

Newspaper archives could help, especially if you can find each person's "local" paper, and find mention of important historical events. "Look! Grandma's parents would have read about the stock market crash. Do you think they would have worried about it?"

[rebcoola]

Work from the present backwards and use the library most have programs now to help people study their genealogy.

[Michael12]

Two relevant books that show that "working backwards" idea where the past connects to the present:

 

The Sky Was Blue by Charlotte Zolotow, illustrated by Garth Williams

http://www.amazon.com/Charlotte-pictures-Williams-Hardcover-Foresman/dp/B003PK09VM

 

Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, particularly passages like chapter 6. It goes beyond just the family history and brings in famous people, events, etc.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/canfield/understood/understood.html

 

 

[Mabelen]

You all have fabulous ideas! I've vaguely thought of how to do family history with my girls before. For our family, this would start with two decades in the U.S., another one in the U.K. and then onto my husband's family in Sri Lanka and mine in Spain. I am excited! Now, how to actually pull it off and when? More to think about!

[Dmmetler]

This also may be a good time to tie in state/local history, too-and we have a lot of it in our area.

[maize]

You could involve your child in research. Looking up ancestors in census records that have been indexed and digitized is a fun place to start.

[Julie of KY]

For living things - take a look at the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Comstock. It's a wealth of information. I would tell me kids to go outside and find something they want to learn more about -- then we'd look it up and learn more as well as find lots of questions to go back outside and study our source. We've looked at anything from ladybugs and dandelions, skunks, flowers, fish, etc. More than the facts in the book, I love the questions it asks for you to answer yourselves (by observation of nature).

 

 

[tm919]

This is tough but I think I'd put up a big family timeline, then do various projects (like some of those previously mentioned, e.g., state and local history) that fit somewhere on that timeline, rather than moving from the past forward. A few things that come to mind:

 

1. Are there any older family members he could interview? One of the best projects I ever did as a child was interviewing my father! He was an older dad, and I was the youngest child, so he remembered things like how terrified people were after Pearl Harbor and the desegregation of the armed forces very vividly. 

 

2. My 5 and 3 year olds were given an assignment at their preschool/K where they had to bring in an "artifact" of their family history and explain how it came to them (after reading some books by Patricia Polocco like "The Keeping Quilt" and "Fiona's Lace"). They brought in a rosary that was owned by their great-great-great-grandmother, and we talked about how even in my lifetime the women in my family went into their bedrooms in the afternoon and prayed on that rosary. This led to some great (not to mention, uncomfortable) questions on why I don't do that.

 

3. My daughters have also loved learning about the tartans/Aran sweaters of the Irish members of the family.

[Lucy the Valiant]

Instead of wars, you could focus on "how people did things" - like eating, transportation, community events, etc. As in . . . "So when Grandma was little, cars looked like this; and when HER mom was little, most families didn't even have their own car. When HER mom was little, people used horses!"

[La Condessa]

How fun! I think I would do a quick overview going backwards along one line to a particular time period/ geographical area, then work forward in great detail from that point. So I would pull out pictures and show them Grandpa Carl's daddy, who had the same name because Grandpa was a Jr. And here is his daddy. He had two names, because his name was anglicized when he came to the U.S. He's just a teenager in this picture, but he had already immigrated across the ocean with just his sister and worked like a grown man by this age. The place he came from was called Boehmen, or we say it Bohemia, and his family had lived there for hundreds of years. Then we would learn about that area in great detail, about the close-knit tiny villages and their Catholic faith and the gothic script alphabet and the lacemaker's trade and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I would introduce them to the families we were descended from, and we would learn about infant christening and the Black Plague. And then we would need to go into the world wars and Czechoslovakia and questions of genocide, and why they have no relatives there now.

 

I love this idea, but I think for my family history, we will have to wait until the kids are older.