Introducing Local & Family History to Kids

Did you like to sit beside your grandparents and listen to them tell stories about when they were young and what your parents were like as kids?  Or, do you regret not asking your grandparents and parents enough questions about their lives and the family when you had the chance?

It can be a challenge to impart family knowledge to kids when they are often distracted by smartphones, computer games, streaming services, sport, and homework.  

Benefits of Local & Family History for Kids

• Builds stronger self-identity

• Builds a sense of belonging 

• Encourages an interest in history 

• Encourages a connection to the past

• Creates inter-generational family bonds

• Can engender empathy and resilience

• Good way to spend a rainy afternoon or school holidays

• Develops their research skills

Ideas for Introducing Local & Family History to Kids

• Keep family traditions alive, especially those around significant events like birthdays and Christmas.

• Teach them how to cook with favourite family recipes, and keep those recipes alive across the generations.  Tell them about the family member who always prepared each dish as you cook.

• If they like building with blocks, show them a picture of the house you grew up and get them to build it.  If you have enough blocks, reconstruct the rooms and tell them how you used to use each room.

• Take lots of photos to record family history as it happens, and back them up and print them out!  Make sure the photos will be around for your kids' grandchildren. 

• Dress-up and recreate family photos.

• When out driving, point out landmarks and buildings that played a part of your family history: 'that's the school I went to', or 'that's the church where we were married'.  Another option is to take the tour online, using Google Street View.

• Drive or walk heritage trails.  Encourage kids to take photos of the sites you visit (perhaps you could have a family photo competition to see who took the best photo).

• If you have a family only social media feed, share the occasional old family photo and tell a story about it.  Challenge the family to identify or share their own memories. 

•  Go through photo albums with kids.  Ask them if they think they look like any of their ancestors.  If they share common facial features, or interests, they may be more interested in hearing stories about them.

• Family gatherings inevitably lead to reminiscing about family history.  Make it more interesting with a home movie night or good old fashioned slide night.

• Create a family history book, this might just be a photo album, or it could have family stories included as well.  Engage kids by getting them to create one all about them.

• If you have a family member who served in the Defence Force, share their story around Anzac Day.  This might be of particular use to them if they have related homework.

• Get some large sheets of paper, print out some photos of family members and create some family trees.  

• Take lots of photos and videos at family events, and encourage kids to record their life as well.  

• Record oral histories, ask each other questions.  This can be done in-person or via a video call.  Ask each other questions like 'what was your favourite childhood toy?', 'where did you live as a child?  what was your home like?', 'what was school like?' 'what did you want to be when you grew up?' Call it a family vlog to get them interested.

• Do you have any famous or really interesting ancestors?  Share those stories to get kids interested.

• Play a game of 'Whose Story?'.  Write a family history clue on one side of an index card and write the answer on the other side.  Take turns reading and guessing and continue to add cards as the years go on.  Are there other games you could adapt to a family theme?

• Encourage kids to ask questions.  For example, go on an heirloom scavenger hunt around your house.  Get kids to point out something that they think might be old and tell them the story.  Can they find the oldest object in your house?

• Not necessarily local or family history, but still history: share your favourite music, movies, and TV shows from when you were their age.  (The Back to the Future franchise is all about exploring local and family history).  

• Turn your family photos into colouring-in pages with a free app.  You could create a colouring-in book, and add a few family stories that go with the pictures.

• If your family has origins in a number of cities / states / countries, create a map indicating where everyone came from.  You could also visit ancestral homes on Google Earth or Google Maps.

They are not interested at all, what do I do?

We tend to develop an interest in history later in life, so do not give up hope that one day your kids or grandkids might start asking questions.  There are a few things you can do now to prepare for that day:

• Write on the backs of photographs (using a HB / #2 pencil).  Include the names of the people (not just 'mum' or 'grandpa', include their actual name), the date (approximate will do) and a brief description of why the photo was taken (e.g. birthday party, someone's wedding, because they were wearing a new outfit).

• Create a family tree.  This does not have to be a complicated, multiple generation, every cousin included family tree.  One that lists the full names of immediate family back to your grandparents will be enough to get them started and for them to make sense of the names on the family photos (include birth, marriage, and death dates where known).

• Record the story of family heirlooms.  Who did it previously belong to?  Did they get them as a wedding present or for another special occasion?  Why is it important that this object stay in the family?

• Record your story.  Either write something down or record a video.  Include all the stories that were significant in your life.

• If you have written a full, illustrated, family history, share it with a few family members.  If it is printed in book format, you could provide a copy to a local genealogical society or library history room.
• Look for kids books about family and local history, My Place, by Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins, and the accompanying ABC3 series are a great place to start.

Picture Ipswich Resources

• Research & Write Local, Family, & House Histories provides links to a growing number of resource on Picture Ipswich to help you get started with your research.

• Additional Resources has further links to resources on websites other than Picture Ipswich.

• Oral Histories - Whole of Life Questionnaire and the People & Families Profile Form provide checklists to make sure you have covered all the main points in your family story, if you are writing them down now.

• School Resources, whilst compiled for use in a classroom, can provide you with school holiday ideas with a family and Ipswich history theme.  The Humanities & Social Sciences F-6/7 collection has activity sheets that you can download and print to work on with primary school aged kids.

• Colouring Ipswich has a selection of over 30 colouring-in pages that you can download, print, and colour-in, all based off of Picture Ipswich images.

• Children's Heritage Trails includes three heritage will help you discover the City Centre, Woodened, and the Bremer River with your guides George and Sienna.  Further Heritage Trails are available.

• Jigsaw Puzzles based on Picture Ipswich images can be completed online.

• Picturing Your Past is a special page created for kids as part of the Picturing Your Past installation at Ipswich Children's Library, Redbank Plains Library, Rosewood Library, and Springfield Library.  Visit one of the installations in person or online to explore daily life in Ipswich in the middle of the 20th Century. 

Places to Visit for Ipswich History

• Galvanized: A Festival of Heritage is an annual Ipswich-wide event held during the first week of September

• The Workshops Rail Museum 

• Ipswich Historical Society have regular open days with kids activities at the Cooneana Heritage Centre. 

• Ipswich Hospital Museum

• Ipswich General Cemetery 

• RAAF Amberley Aviation Heritage Centre

• The Queensland Pioneer Steam Railway

• Discover Ipswich has a number of history and heritage related ideas to add to your to-do-list

• Great Houses of Ipswich, presented by the Ipswich Branch of the National Trust Queensland