25 Ideas for Family History Fun

by Marilyn Deputy and Maren Jeppsen

Discover the fascinating and creative world of family history. Read through this list of ideas and decide which ones you might like to try. If you use your imagination, you will probably think of some additional activities. Good luck and have fun.

Find out what people did for fun 100 years ago and then have a Century Party. You could pull taffy or square dance. Costumes might be interesting.

Write about the funniest thing that ever happened to you, the saddest, the happiest, the scariest, etc.

Have you ever made your own soap, toothpaste, butter, etc.? Instructions for making such projects may be found in books available at any public library.

Take a carriage or hayride with a group of your friends.

See what life was like without electricity. Don’t use any of this wonderful discovery for 24 hours. (Note! You better leave the refrigerator and freezer plugged in if you expect a smiling mother.)

Go to your local library and check out records that have songs that were popular the year your parents graduated from high school. Ask your parents to show you the dances that went with the songs. (Now that should make for an interesting evening!)

Visit a town where an ancestor lived. Be sure to take your camera and lots of film.

Make a video of a family party or stage a video movie of an episode from your family’s history.

Entertain your family by serving some tempting dishes that your ancestral family might have eaten such as Danish dumplings, lasagna, sauerkraut, sushi, lox and bagels, johnnycakes, smoked dried jerky, or French pastry! What items were on your ancestors’ menu?

Have you ever asked your parents to tell you how they met? Was it “love at first sight”? What qualities did they find irresistible in each other?

Make a time capsule (a great activity when you’re in charge of family home evening). Get a sturdy box. Place in it various items that are important to you and your family. Some things you might put in it are a cassette recording of your family, a family photo, a stamp, a coin, a movie ticket, a program from sacrament meeting, school papers, report cards, family artwork, poems, etc. Mark the box with the date it can be opened, such as in one year or the day you return from your mission. Don’t forget where you hid the box!

Make an anniversary present for your parents by compiling slides or pictures of the family. You can also make slide copies of old family snapshots. A slide show could be the main attraction at a party honoring such an important event.

Visit the county courthouse or agency where your birth certificate is filed. Purchase a copy of your certificate.

Paint a picture; build a model; design an embroidery, counted cross-stitch, or needlepoint replica of your own home or an ancestral home. Don’t be surprised if your work becomes a treasured family possession. (Be sure to label the back of the replica with the address of the home and the name of the person who owned or owns it.)

Create a family history quilt. Using a quilt block for each member of your family, symbolize their interests or personalities in a lasting and colorful way. Quilt blocks can also be designed to symbolize a grandparent’s life.

Organize a potluck dinner for relatives living near you. Don’t forget to include some games and activities. If you have cousins that are near your age, consider hosting a cousins’ party.

Learn close-up photography techniques. Most community schools offer classes. Using your new skills, make copies of your favorite family snapshots for gifts or for yourself.

Collect all of your personal certificates. Place them in nonadhesive plastic envelopes to protect them. (Note: Using adhesive plastic envelopes, Scotch tape, or rubber cement glue will cause your certificates to deteriorate before their time).

Find out the names of your earliest ancestors who joined the Church. Where were they baptized and how did the Church change their lives?

Collect old family photographs showing your grandparents and great-grandparents. Decide which ancestor you resemble the most.

Keep a journal. It doesn’t have to be a daily diary. You could make a monthly entry on the highlights of what you have learned. Be sure to write about your feelings too.

Many first names have meanings. Find out the meaning of your name and why your parents gave it to you.

Make a family tree using family photographs. Be sure to write the name of each person under his picture.

Interview the oldest living members of your parents’ families, and record the interviews on tape or in written form. Possible interview topics are childhood memories, holidays, changes they have seen, historical events, family members, family customs, education, transportation, recreation, marriage and later life, and their philosophy of life.

Learn some interesting information about the history, culture, food, language, or geography of a country where your ancestors lived.

After you’ve exhausted these 25 ideas, you may find that you’ve got a few ideas of your own for learning more about your family, your ancestors, and your heritage. And this new knowledge can serve a good purpose. It can make us sensitive to those who went before. It can create in us a desire to search out the names and vital information of our relatives.

As members of the Church, one of our main obligations is the redemption of the dead. After gathering the memorabilia and treasured memories of your present-day family, you’ll also want to gather those beloved ancestors who lived without a knowledge of the gospel into your great eternal family.

the benefits of journaling

Do you keep a journal? Many people use journaling to relieve stress, capture treasured memories while they are fresh, record the historic times they are living through, and ass a way to make use of some found time. Keeping a journal is an important way to record the stories of daily life today for the generations of tomorrow.

Let's look at some of the benefits:

1. Reducing Stress and Anxiety. Journaling has been shown to help handle stress. It gives you time to make sense of thoughts and emotions that come with anxiety.

2. Preserving Personal History.  Our thoughts and daily lives can be preserved for generation to come by telling stories that can help our great-great-grandchildren navigate their own lives.

3. Telling Untold Stories. Everyone has a unique experience, even during a globally important event.  There are always articles about important events, but just as important are the stories of those who lived through it.

4. Personal Reflection.  You are writing for yourself, and you can choose if and how you want to share those memories later. [Side note: the first time I read this I thought it said Personal Revelation. The same advice applies.]

-- this article was taken from a familysearch instagram post.

Remembering grandma

 

the difference between a recollection and a journal entry

Would you rather have 3 lines or a detailed description?

 

Online System for Temple Prayer Rolls

 

The First Presidency has announced that an online system has been created to allow members to send the names, of family or friends who are in need, to the temple, where those names will be placed on the prayer roll.

Requests can now be made by visiting any temple's information page and clicking the prayer roll link. Requests can also be made through the Temples section of the Member Tools mobile app. This update to the Android and iOS versions of the app will be available in the coming days. Once the names are entered, they will be sent to that temple (or to the nearest operating temple if that temple is closed).

Star Wars

 

tribute to a grandma

 written by MaryJan Munger, these memories conjure up sights, sounds, and smells.  Even if we didn't know Hannah, we feel like we did!

Today is the birthday of my dear dear grandmother Hannah Hansen Gay. She would have been 103 years old. She grew up in "Gravelbed" just outside of Monroe, Utah, where she sang songs with her sisters and climbed up in a tree with a book to escape dishes. When she was grown she married and moved over the hill to Joseph, Utah, and had two sons (my dad and uncle Larry) and one daughter (named for her husband and herself: Dee + Hannah= Deanna) who was born too soon and died after only a few days. Everyone who knew her seemed to feel she had a particular love for and delight in them individually. I think she probably did. She played the ukulele and sang songs like "When It's Springtime in the Rockies" (I remember her teaching me the words while driving up the mountain, me wedged between her and Grandpa in the old blue Ford pick-up on a rainy June day on the way to go camping at Fish Lake) and "Go To Sleep, My Little Buckaroo" (my dearest memory of this: her lullaby as I snuggled down, in my dad's old army green canvas sleeping bag with the red flannel cowboy lining, out on the grass by the back porch, looking up into the milky light of those western stars shining down on me). She also led the music at church and because it was my favorite song always scheduled "Come Come Ye Saints" (#13 in those days) when I came to visit -- her face twinkling down at me as she waved her arms to pull the singing from the congregation. She was the town postmistress and so visiting at her house was always punctuated by the sharp *ting* of the silver bell and then neighbors' voices as they came to collect their mail from cunning little golden boxes with adorable curly handles and fancy numbering in the little office built just off her kitchen. We children weren't allowed on the other side of the gate but we could watch her sort the mail and hear the neighbors' gossip. In the evenings we'd help her hoist down the flag and fold it into a tight triangle of beautiful starry blue which she would then lay on the impressive looking brass scale. Our parents (but never Grandma herself) scolded us for "mailing" pinecones in the big blue mailbox out by the road. The only cross words I ever heard from her were an impatient "Hell's bells, Dee!" to my Grandpa once in a while, which always made us giggle, because she was so angelic in every other way you couldn't take it as actual cussing. She read Little Golden Books to us in a rushed breathless voice, licking her fingers to turn the pages, all of us grandkids piled up in her lap. Her bookcase was filled with actual books a person could read for fun -- Zane Grey westerns and romance novels about dashing young women who found adventure everywhere from the American West to misty, mysterious England to Imperial China. She let us "experiment" with every ingredient in her kitchen -- I made some memorably awful dishes with broccoli and mayonnaise, peaches and Worcestershire sauce. More successfully we made crust cookies sprinkled with sugar when she made her pies, her quick clever fingers pinching scallops all around the pie-pan. She taught us how to play cards mercilessly -- Bloody Smash was our favorite -- as well as how to embroider flowers and birds and smiling self-portraits to decorate our pillowcases and how to crochet blankets for our dolls. And there were always cookies or cake and Neapolitan ice cream or Shasta black cherry soda to guzzle out on the front porch while we listened to the whine and roar of semis barreling past down state route 89 or frozen cherries in little baggies that she would let us take outside so we could spit the pits in the grass. Her house was tall, steep-roofed, and pale green with a flagpole and two giant pine trees filled with singing birds. Baby birds would sometimes fall from their nests and we would try to save them, filling their little gullets with tiny translucent red berries from Grandma's bird bush (I think it was a viburnum). Grandma Hannah's garden was iris and buttercup, yellow columbine, pink peonies, snowball bush, snapdragon, and petunias. Grandpa Dee's garden was tomatoes, potatoes, squash, cucumbers that Grandma made into unequalled bread & butter pickles, and the peas and beans Grandma would shell or snap it seems every summer morning. Her meals were the height of deliciousness, love made into a casserole or cake or jello salad. Her hugs were all-encompassing, her sweet floury scent all-embracing, her soft smiling cheek still a memory against my own. Oh, how much I still miss her! When I see her again, will she say like she always did, "Why, Dee, look who's here. It's the kids! I'm just tickled pink!" and gather me up in her arms? I still see her in my mind's eye, standing on her front lawn waving for as long as I look back out of the car window as we drive away.

Note: This memory was originally shared on Facebook Aug. 25, 2018. The tribute was titled: Happy happy birthday, Grandma Hannah dear

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