With the holiday break almost upon us and the threat of some
pretty crummy weather to go with it, here are some final ideas on studying
American history via your family’s history.
Get out a map of the United States and plot all of the
places where family members have lived or live now. See how spread out they all
are and then study the history of those areas. For example, if you come from
the Great Plains as I do, what was going on when your family made it to
Nebraska (my home state). I could easily ask, “Do you know anything about the
Oregon Trail? The Plum Creek Massacre? General Stephen Kearny?”
It may take a little work, but the public library will be
open the day after Christmas and the internet is always open, so explore and
learn something about your country.
Have each family member make a timeline of their lives and
then add in important dates from American history. This is a great project when
you have the whole clan together because you will span a great deal of the last
century and all of this one. In my
case, that would mean Sputnik, the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, Watergate,
the Civil Rights Movement, a man on the moon,…..well, you get the drift.
This activity can spark some really interesting
conversations about childhoods that the kids will LOVE because it makes the
adults in their lives more human. If there’s someone in the family who’s good
at this, create an entire family timeline as the basis for a multi-month study
in 2013.
Some families make quilts together, some create photo
albums. One of my husband’s cousins-in-law is a professional photographer and
after most family get togethers we receive an album in the mail of pictures Kim
has taken. It’s a great way to preserve family memories, even more so this year
for the Bonnen’s as it was the last Thanksgiving in the family homestead before
it goes on the market.
One suggestion from the book we’ve been using for these blog
posts – “My History is America’s History” – is to create a family museum. I’ll
let you decide if you want to do this with “stuff” or photos (which you should
take of family treasures any way), but it is a neat idea because you’ll likely
be surprised at what other family members value.
Investigate genealogy resources and start working on your
family tree. As we’ve said before, we’re lucky in Allen County to have our
genealogy department at the downtown public library. It doesn’t get any better
than that. But there are also www.ancestry.com, www.myhistory.org and
www.usgenweb.org to help along the way and get you started.
And if you’re hunting for a unique gift for someone, why not
write down a story about that person and send it them? If you have a particular
memory of an event in someone’s life such as a graduation, award they received
or a special vacation, share your impressions. As you grow older, send your
children photos from their childhood. They’d probably like to have some of
those when they become adults.
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