Family Trees

As part of our ongoing unit on trees, I thought it would be fun to take the month of February, a month we normally celebrate love and family, and study family trees. I myself had just learned how to use the new family search program the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints put out, and it seemed like a good time to get the kids interested in genealogy work. Since we still hadn't gotten around to studying the state of Missouri, the birth place of the three older kids, I figured a good place to start our unit was with the kids own personal histories. As such, our first order of business was to talk to the kids about their individual entrances into the world. We talked about when I was pregnant with each of the kids, and of course, the day they were born. We looked through their baby books, their photo albums, and watched home videos. The kids absolutely loved the few days they each got to be spotlighted.

Following our week and a half of spotlighting, we then took a little bit of time to study the state of Missouri. During this time we made little books entitled Once Upon Time I lived in St. Louis. (I will scan one of these on for a different post on our family blog.) We printed out old pictures of our St. Louis house, our yard, and lots of the places that we used to love to go. During our last few weeks in St. Louis, I envisioned making these books, (though not in the context of homeschooling) and as such, I also took pictures before we moved of each of the kids with their best friends in town. These pictures would make up the last page of each of the kids books. The kids really enjoyed this project, and it helped them "remember" our time in their birth state.

We also took this opportunity to study the whole state of Missouri. We had already talked about the history and destiny of the state of Missouri as far as its religious heritage was concerned, i.e. as the sight of the garden of Eden, and as the place for the New Jerusalem. Now we also talked about more general state history. One of the things that impressed the kids most was the terrible earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 near New Madrid. These quakes were the nation's largest, so big in fact, that they caused the mighty Mississippi to temporarily flow backwards.

With their birth stories, memory books, and Missouri state history behind us, we then moved through our whole family tree and began a few more weeks of pictures and storytelling. Nick and I went first, showing our baby pictures and telling stories of our childhood. Then the kids got to call and Skype with their grandparents to hear their stories and stories about their parents and grandparents. I even sent letters to my grandparents, the kids' great-grandparents, and had them write down stories of their childhoods. The kids loved our daily family history lessons, and begged to hear more and more. They really internalized these stories too, and I could tell from the light in their faces as they listened that we were successfully planting the seeds of genealogy into their hearts. It was an awesome month long unit, and one of the reasons that I love homeschooling. The kids could never have learned all of this stuff at public school!

Here is a picture of Spencer (and Mase) holding the family tree that we made during our unit.
There were a few pictures missing when we took this picture, and eventually Mason got a hold of the tree and ate the faces off of it, but someday Nick and I want to put together a binder with another version of this tree so the kids can always look at it and remember their ancestry.



And here is a picture of Maddi that I took a few days after we finished our family tree unit. I asked her what she was up to and she proudly declared, "I'm playing in a one man band, just like great-great-Grandpa Carter used to do for you when you were a little girl!" Indeed, the music of great-great Grandpa Carter may be one of the most lasting impressions on my kids. They love it when I sing them his lullabies, and in truth, for some reason those lullabies sooth them more than any others. I like to believe it's because he is present beyond the veil when we remember him in this way. The kids also like it when I sing any of his other silly songs. They're even pretty amazing when it comes to knowing the words. Grandpa would be proud!