Family History Ideas Shared - for Youth:

From Doris Bateman:   

A couple of years ago I adapted a booklet originally made for children by Dawn Bushman to use by our youth.  It begins with them filling out pages about themselves and their interests, and then they interview parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents if they have them, and then move on into research activities to find names to take to the temple.  It was written for use with PAF, I intend to revise it when I have access to new FamilySearch.  It is available online at:  

http://ohanasoftware.com/?sec=ldswc&page=ymyw<http://ohanasoftware.com/?sec=ldswc&page=ymyw>

From Regine Brindle:
There is a wonderful 5 minute video on Rootstelevision about a young man who has indexed a cemetery in Bingham, UT as an eagle scout project.
The YW may not want to do this exact same thing but maybe they could be inspired to help with a similar project with your county's USGenWeb site.
Just a thought... I hughly recommend this presentation to everyone.  I was all choked up when I watched it as one of our young men a few years back had thought he would do the same thing only it never got off the ground. It has since inspired others to photograph our local cemeteries for the US Genweb projects.

  Go to www.rootstelevision.com
  Click on Rootstube then choose "Connecting Families Across the World"

Many genealogy choices:  http://www.rootstelevision.com/program_guide.php

From Gay Davis:
The YW currently have three elective goals that are related to FH and temple work.  They are:

1--Individual Worth #5: Visit with your living relatives to learn as much information about your family history as possible.  Then complete a pedigree chart of your family and list the temple ordinances that have been completed for each person.
 
2--Individual Worth Value Project (10 hours):  Compile your personal or family history using journal entries, pictures, and important papers.
 
3--Good Works Value Project (10 hours):  Work with a family member to gather the names of some deceased relatives who were not members of the Church.  Identify their birth and death dates and submit their names to the temple  Help plan a temple trip and do baptisms for those relatives.

I am interested in presenting a program to the YW covering at least Goals 1 and 3 prior to the next youth baptismal trip.  I don't want to reinvent the wheet and I am sure many of you have already done this.  I would appreciate hearing from others what activities really clicked with this age group and any ideas that would be helpful in preparing a program for them.  Thanks.

From Shanna Jones:
In my ward we taught the young women how to do FamilySearch Indexing.  They loved it and it is easy for them to spend 10 hours doing it for their project.

From Carol Newey:

In our ward we have Temple trips about 2-3 times a year. For our last Temple trip, the Bishop wanted me to teach not only the youth but also the Adult members of the ward how to prepare a name for the Temple - what was required, how to use TempleReady, etc.
So during a 5th Sunday meeting when we normally have the Priesthood and Relief Society combined, we included the youth as well and I created a PowerPoint presentation on preparing a name for the temple.  Many people asked some good questions and several of the youth were able to take names to the temple.

I found the best way to make Family History interesting to youth is to help them realize that these are real people with real lives.  What did they do?  Were they like us?  Were they involved in any of the wars? 


From Carrie Taylor:

I taught the Genealogy Merit Badge Class in my ward last year.  One of the best exercises we did involved me passing out several death certificates of my ancestors and asking the boys to find clues about the people and ideas for more research.  They really got into it.  I suggest putting them in clear pages to avoid any damage as they are boys after all--no offense to the male members of the list! 

Another exercise I do is to have each person write their name on a piece of paper and then exchange it with someone else who tries to figure out as many different ways to spell that name as possible.  This helps them look out for other spellings and misinterpretations of names. 


From Sister Venita Parry,  Missionary - Family History Training Center Provo, Utah - Utah South Area Family History Training Center :

Teaching the youth to do FamilySearch Indexing works well. They are so computer-savvy that they pick it up easily and it's something that they can do at any time on their own; and it opens a channel for the Holy Ghost to whisper to them about their own family.  It's less intimidating than doing in-depth research, but it gets them into the work and helps them learn what kind of information they can find in certain records. Extracting information from censuses makes people "real" even when they are not your own relatives.  That helps build curiosity about one's own and may lead to asking questions about their dead, asking the living relatives about their memories, wanting to hear the stories, looking for census info about their ancestors, looking for other records, etc., etc.  


From Lynda Garn:

I taught the priests in our ward the family history class for 6 weeks.  It was one of the funnest class I have ever had.  The ym were so enthusiastic to learn about their family history.  I taught 5 ym, two sets of cousins and one move in.  We live in a predominantly LDS small town and so all of the boys ancestors were LDS from way back.  There wasn't many ancestors that needed their work done so we concentrated on teaching them how to help others start their family history work.  I taught them the basics of PAF, Familysearch.com and filling out their pedigree and family group sheets.   The parts they said they liked the best was learning how to interview someone and working with obituaries.  I found a bunch of obituaries on the internet, printed them out and gave each ym an obit, family group sheets and pedigree chart.  They filled it out and then corrected each others to see what had been missed.  They then had to write their own obit using all of their personal information.  It was a very fun lesson.   Another thing we did was to trace their preisthood lineage.  It was a challenge for some because their fathers and grandfathers that had ordained could always remember who had ordained them.  In the end we completed all but one lineage.  We are still working on it.  Last week was the last class session we had together.  They moved on the their missionary prep class.  I am going to teach the laurels next and then the next batch of priest will take the class.  Can't wait.


From Miles Meyer:

We are planning a Stake Scout-Youth-Primary Family History Day. The purpose of this activity is to help the youth with some of their advancements. We have planned for 4 hours and will have various stations set up around the ward. We hope to start them out with a simple family group sheet and pedigree chart and by the end they should have a migration map, some actual records and have had some fun doing it. The last time we did this I was amazed how few children knew their grandparents' names. By the time we were finished, all of them had at least one census record to take home and had most of their 4 generations filled in.  


From Nora Ray:

I was YW President before my call as FH Director.  One thing we did that was fun: Prior to the lesson, I asked each girl's mother to tell me something about one of her daughter's ancestors.  For the lesson, I wrote each girl's name on one side of the board and the things the mothers told me in random order on the other side.  Then the girls tried to match the ancestor with the descendant.  One girl who was less active came that evening, and it just happened that I knew she had Pocahontas in her family tree.  When she came to the one that said "This girl is related to an Indian princess"  she was very surprised as she didn't think she would be included.  I think we did this at Mutual, not on Sunday, but it could maybe be adapted for a Sunday lesson.  


From Don Blanchard:

I used some of the information in the Summit alumni magazine Spring 2007 by Michael Otterson, Director of Media Relations, LDS Public Affairs, Brigham Young University-Idaho Devotional, November 28, 2006.  The graph on page 10 representing the number of people who have ever lived on the earth, the present world population, and the LDS church membership was easy to draw on the chalkboard.  The article makes the point that the sheer number of spirits waiting for temple ordinances is so overwhelming that we may find it difficult to appreciate that every spirit is one of our Father's children.  Being loved by God is exactly what all of the human family has in common.  I think young people can relate to the argument on page 12:  "Uncle Fred is the family historian, and he does it all."  That's a bit like saying,  "Well, I don't go to church, but that's okay because Uncle Fred goes for me."  


From Elmer Ping:
 
Make up several (depending on the number of youth participating) "families" on sheets and cut out parts of the sheets as clues to the whole family on that sheet.  Maybe one clue would be first name and birthdate, another would be last name and birthplace.  Have a little fun with it but don't make it too hard.

Then distribute the clues, turn off half the lights in the room and set a time limit of say 10 minutes to match the clues.  The cut out clues, when put together, will be a family group sheet ready to take to the Temple.  Simple because that's all you need to do Temple work for someone is a family group sheet.  The "team" with all the clues matched wins free passage out of the semi-darkened room to one of full lights.  Obvious parallels to helping your ancestors get released from spirit prison, right?

Just an idea; feel free to change it or adapt it to your needs.  For instance you could have them bring flashlights to your presentation and turn all the lights out so they have to use the flashlights to see the clues and find the other matching clues.  Then the passage to the room with all the lights on would be more dramatic, right?  Or when one team matches all
clues, then they help the other teams to match clues so everyone gets out of the darkened room.