With this week being about a month away from the birth of my baby daughter, it got me thinking about how she may or may not enjoy genealogy. I will have no hard feelings about it if she takes no interest in it. I know I probably would’ve snubbed my nose at it when I was a young’n.
Though, this also got me thinking about how to use it to her advantage. For one, almost every kid gets the “Trace Your Family Tree” assignment in elementary school. When that time comes, I think we’re pretty well set. The other way we could use this for her would be in certain history classes. If you tell her that her 4th-great-grandfather, and a few others, fought for the Union army in the Civil War, this may make learning about it more exciting. I was never much of a fan of history classes when I was in school. I trudged through them, but really only learned enough to get by. Now, after getting into genealogy, I love history and watch a lot of the shows about certain aspects of history. I am usually much more interested in history that involves my ancestors.
Have any of you used genealogy to help kids, or others, in school?