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"When In Doubt, Go To The Library"

7/18/2018

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed a downturn in posts lately. Our family relocated at the beginning of the summer, which is always a lot of work and takes a lot of time. We are pretty settled in now, but another change has entered our lives. I now have a part-time job working as a Branch Services Assistant in the children's section of our local library.

After eleven years as a stay-at-home mom, I welcome this opportunity to get my foot back into the world of employment, especially at a library, which is pretty much my favorite place to be, aside from at home with my family. However, the job will leave me less time to devote to this website and blog. New activities and blog posts will be forthcoming, but they just might happen less frequently. (You may, however, see more book reviews and recommendations!) And, as long as I can tell that people are using the website resources, I intend to keep the site active and free for use.

Thanks for reading and following my blog! Remember, if you ever need advice on activities for young people to get them interested in family history, please send me an email - I'd love to help!

"When in doubt, go to the library." ~ J.K. Rowling

©2018 Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Map Reading at the Cemetery

6/12/2018

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Map Reading at the Cemetery // GrowingLittleLeaves.com

Hey everyone! It's been a little while since I've posted anything here, and that's because our family was in the process of relocating from the Indianapolis area to the Cleveland, Ohio area. So, it's been a little bit stressful and a lot hectic, but we've started to settle into our new home and community, so I have a little more time for genealogy research and activities (yay!)

I grew up in this area, and Cleveland is the city in which ALL of my ancestors settled when they immigrated to America. I (and my kids) have a lot of family history here, and we are excited to live here now so we can explore it!

The day your moving truck shows up at your new place to unload is a day to have the kids OUT of the house and out of the movers' ways. So, my husband stayed at the house and I took my kids out for the day. And, of course, we went to the cemetery to find some ancestors.

Calvary Cemetery is the largest Roman Catholic cemetery in Cleveland, with over 300,000 interments. It is by far the largest cemetery in which we've ever searched for a grave. Fortunately, the Diocese of Cleveland has an easy-to-use (free!) online searching tool for locating burials within their cemeteries, and I had already found the sections, rows, and grave numbers we were searching for. So, I told my kids, the first thing we have to do is to visit the cemetery office building and ask for some maps.

Visiting a cemetery office building is a great learning experience for children. We walked in and approached the front desk, where we were greeted by a woman who asked us how she could help. We showed her the paper where I had written the section and plot information I was searching for. She was nice enough to double-check my search information and then she left to find us some maps. My kids and I had to be patient; she was the only one there at the time and she was attempting to field phone calls while also working on finding our maps. We strolled around the lobby a bit and talked about how it is important to be quiet and respectful in a building like this, because other visitors may have just experienced the loss of a loved one and might be planning funerals.

After a few minutes, the woman called us back to the desk and showed us what she had found. I made sure my kids were next to me when she started explaining everything, so that they could hear, too. First, she gave us a map of the entire cemetery, with all of the sections labeled by number. She highlighted the section we were looking for and the route we needed to take:

Next, she gave us a close-up map of the part of the section where my great-grandparents were buried. Their grave should be relatively easy to locate, she said, because they are in the first row in front of a larger section of grass (where an old driveway used to be). And, again, she highlighted the plot for us. (She was such a GEM and so very helpful to us!)

Like many of us, I think my kids were a little intimidated by this map more than the previous one. Just the shear amount of numbers shown can be overwhelming, but, honestly, I was glad the kids were with me. They had an easier time just seeing the numbers on the page because my aging eyes are getting to the point where I need reading glasses for small print.

I gave them the maps to examine as we drove to the correct section. Good cemetery maps (and these were) have distance scales and a compass rose, just like regular maps, and we used the built in compass in our car and compared it to the map, to make sure we were facing in the correct directions.

Here they are with their great-great-grandparents!

The next grave we were searching for was more difficult; it was in the middle of a large section. In this case, our helper at the cemetery office highlighted larger monuments nearby that we could use as reference points, which is SUCH a valuable skill to have when doing any sort of map reading, but especially in cemeteries. (You can actually see two of the larger reference monuments in the photo of my kids below - just over my son's shoulder.) My kids also soon found out that the columns and rows that look so neat and straight on the map aren't always that way in real life, especially when you are dealing with older gravestones that have shifted slightly over time due to land settling or tree roots actually moving the stones. It took more time to find this one, but we were again successful!

I'm so glad we had this opportunity to explore this cemetery and find some ancestors. We will surely be back to look for others, and now that I've found the cemetery maps online, we can do a lot of the prep work together at home. And next time, we will bring along our own highlighters, magnifying glasses and/or reading glasses, and waterproof shoes. :-)

I think with all of the GPS on our phones and in our cars, map reading is becoming a dying art. But it's still SO important to learn and it helps kids really develop that kind of spatial awareness and aptitude that is beneficial not only when trying to find your way around, but also when learning other disciplines, such as art, geometry, chemistry, and even higher-level calculus. So, tackle one of these larger cemeteries with your kids or grandkids, go with plenty of time to kill, and let the kids read the maps and lead the way. They will be SO proud of themselves when they discover the resting place of an ancestor!

©2018 Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Matriarchal Elephant Herds

5/11/2018

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With Mother's Day around the corner, I wanted to create an activity that related to mothers, but that also reflected the mothering spirit that so many of our female family members possess, whether they be biological mothers or not.

I started thinking about elephants. Female elephants and juvenile males live in complex social groups that are matriarchal in hierarchy. One elder female elephant leads a multi-generational herd of related females and young males. They all travel together, and protect and care for each other. And since elephants can live as long as humans, and their behaviors suggest a deep emotional intelligence, the bonds they form with each other are just as strong as the bonds we form with our human family members. This PBS website discusses more about the social behaviors of African elements, and even includes a family pedigree chart of one particular herd!

Kids love watching and learning about elephants. And I think you can combine a science/nature lesson about elephants with a family history lesson, using the elephants' social structure has a jumping-off point. Here is a worksheet with some cute little elephants, where kids can write down the names of immediate and extended female family members who they feel sometimes act as a mother towards them. (Click on image to download PDF.)

Matriarchal Elephant Herds // GrowingLittleLeaves.com

Modern families don't always live near their immediate and extended family members, but I think it is important for us to talk with our children about just how important female relationships were to many of our ancestors. Women raised children together, sewed together, grew food together, and relied on other women for essential medical care, especially during and immediately after childbirth. It's a good history lesson for all of us, to bring awareness to bonds without which many of our ancestors would not have survived.

©2018 Emily Kowalski Schroeder. All rights reserved.

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Book Review: Last in a Long Line of Rebels

5/1/2018

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Book Review: Last in a Long Line of Rebels by Lisa Lewis Tyre // GrowingLittleLeaves.com

Happy May to everyone! Today, I have a book to share with you called Last in a Long Line of Rebels by Lisa Lewis Tyre, published in 2015. This novel, written for about ages 10 and up, has a strong family history focus and I really think it's great at showing kids just how exciting and interesting family history can be!

Twelve-year-old Louise (Lou) Mayhew lives with her Dad, the local junk dealer, her (pregnant) mom who is an artist, and her grandma Bertie, who, in addition to being the town flirt and gossip, is also a keen local history patron and the family's amateur genealogist. They all live together in an antebellum home in small-town Tennessee, a home that has been in the Mayhew family for generations. The story takes place in 1999.

Lou and her best friend, Benjamin Zerto (Benzer, for short) are lamenting over what is looking to be a boring and uneventful summer break, when they overhear Lou's parents talking about how they may lose their house and property to the town through eminent domain.

Lou is heartbroken, but she, along with Benzer, her friend Franklin, and her cousin Patty become determined to find a way to somehow save the house.

Before long, the kids discover a mysterious letter in an old family Bible, and set off on a mission to figure out any important Civil War connections the house may have had, so that it can be listed on the National Register of Historic Places (and saved from demolition). The kids visit the local library and county history museum in their quest, and learn an old story about stolen gold and murder involving Lou's ancestors during the Civil War.

In a style reminiscent of the 1980s movie Goonies, the four kids become determined to figure out what happened to this stolen gold, knowing that recovering it could help Lou's parents pay for the legal fees they would incur if they fought for the house. In a bit of family history serendipity, Lou finds an ancestor's diary in a secret compartment of a wooden box she saves from the remains of a local estate sale. And then, the pieces of the puzzle start to come together...but I'll save that for you to read about.

There are so many great family history themes presented over the course of this novel, some in actual conversations between the characters. Here are just a few that would lead to awesome discussions with kids in a book club setting:

- Our ancestors weren't perfect, and may have done things that were morally wrong.
- The beliefs and decisions of your ancestors do not define who you are as a person.
- Stories passed down orally through the generations will usually contain a little bit of truth and a little bit of fiction.
- Learning history becomes way more interesting when your own ancestors were involved.

A running parallel plot throughout this book involves Isaac, a teenager who works for Lou's father, and who is a pretty great football player with hopes of getting a local scholarship so he can attend the University of Tennessee. Isaac, who is African-American, does not receive the scholarship, which is due solely to the racist beliefs of a local high school coach.

Honestly, I really enjoyed this plot as much as the family history one, because it demonstrated some of the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways in which racism still permeates through our modern society. And it shows kids how to have the courage to speak out against it and rally behind those who are affected by it.

If you are interested in reading this book, you can probably find it at your local library or feel free to click on the image below to be directed to Amazon.com. (This is an affiliate link; a small portion of your order amount will support the Growing Little Leaves website. There is no additional cost to you.)

©2018 Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Using Family History to Teach Environmentalism

4/19/2018

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Using Family History to Teach Environmentalism // GrowingLittleLeaves.com

Sunday, April 22 is Earth Day. Founded in 1970, Earth Day has become a worldwide day of awareness of environmental issues and action towards solutions. All U.S. states now include environmental issue awareness within their education standards, and schoolchildren will often spend an entire week, if not more, discussing and learning about environmental issues within their classrooms.

We can teach children a lot about environmentalism through the study of history, even using the personal stories of our ancestors. It can be a tricky topic, though. A lot of what our predecessors did in the past hurt the environment, sometimes irreversibly, but there are also a lot ways in which we can look to our ancestors' lifestyles as examples of ways to help lessen our personal impacts on the environment.

It's no secret that some things our ancestors did hurt the Earth's atmosphere, land, and water. Here's the tricky part - there was a time when people didn't know certain actions were harming the overall health of the natural environment. Or, they knew, but needed to put food on the table, so any long-term environmental concerns took a backseat to survival. My great-grandfathers left their agrarian lifestyle in the Old County to work in the ever-polluting steel mills and foundries of early 20th-century America. These mills and factories provided good jobs for unskilled laborers, and I wouldn't be here today if they hadn't made that decision. But those industries made a lot of people sick, and polluted the local water sources, as well.

So, we can teach our kids about these ancestors' lives in a way in which they:
1.) Learn about their ancestors' lifestyles, occupations, and the industries in which they worked.
2.) Learn about how those lifestyles and industries both helped in the progress of civilization and technology, but also hurt the people and natural environment around them.
3.) Learn about how popular movements, legislation, and new technologies were developed to help protect the air, water, land, plants, and animals.

So, don't be afraid to talk with your kids about environmental problems their ancestors may have been a part of. We can all learn from our ancestors' environmental ignorance and mistakes, even if it was done in the spirit of self-preservation. Below is a list of environmental topics to discuss that you might find applicable to your family's history:

-Unregulated burning of wood, peat, and fossil fuels by transportation, manufacturing, mining, and industrial factories and companies.

-Release of human & animal waste and industrial by-products into water resources.

-Destruction of natural habitat resulting in species depletion or extinction.

-Erosion of topsoil due to poor farming, ranching, and landscaping practices.

-Through travel and exploration, introduction of non-native plants, animals, and diseases to new environments, which caused depletion or destruction of native plants and animals.

-Harvesting wild animals for their body parts or by-products, resulting in extreme depletion or extinction of a species. (Whaling, fur/pelt trading, bone/tusk/horn harvesting)

On the flip side of this discussion, how can we model and adopt some of our ancestors' behaviors and actions to help reduce our 'footprint' on today's environment?

-Reuse and Repurpose: We live in a throw-away society, which contributes greatly to landfill waste, and, increasingly, water pollution. Our ancestors, even those living less than a hundred years ago, did not have this mindset. Shoes were repaired, and clothing was mended or the cloth was used for other purposes. (Anyone have an ancestor who used to make rag rugs?) My grandmother reused common household items such as Saran-wrap, aluminum foil, and even wrapping paper. Old newspapers would line household cabinets, and women during the Great Depression kept their families clothed using cloth from flour and feed sacks. Talk to your kids about some of the ways their ancestors may have reused common household items, and challenge them to find old or discarded things around your house that they might be able to use for another purpose.

-Transportation: For most of human history, our ancestors walked or used livestock to get where they needed to go. And even in the early part of the 20th century, when cars weren't affordable to most Americans, walking, biking, and public transportation were the main modes of transport for a large portion of the population. In a journal, my grandmother wrote several short lines about each of the homes she had lived in as a kid, and, in one entry, she remembered disliking a particular address because she and her sister had to take two streetcars to get to school each day.
Discuss with your kids about how their ancestors got from place to place without the automobile, and challenge them to think of ways in which they can use walking, public transportation or biking in their everyday lives, in order to reduce the number of car trips they need to take.

-Gardening and Composting: Many of our rural ancestors grew and raised most of the food they ate, or they traded and bought locally from nearby farmers. Today, most of us get our food from places far from where it is grown and processed, which means lots of fuel is consumed in its packaging and transport. Challenge your family to start a backyard vegetable garden, or get involved in a local community garden project to try to grow some of the produce you typically eat. Support local farms by buying their produce, dairy products, eggs, and meat. Start a compost pile, so you don't have to send organic refuse to the landfill.

-Water: There's no question that most of us in the first-world take for granted the abundance of clean, easily-accessible water. Many of our ancestors may have had to pump their water by hand or carry it from the nearest source to their home. It was a lot of work, so water was not to be wasted. After hearing some of our ancestors' accounts of water retrieval, I think a lot of us, not just kids, would be more conscious of not letting the tap or the shower run too long.

-Renewable Energy: Before the advent of the big wind turbines that can be seen in some of today's open landscapes, for centuries, individual farmers had been using wind power to pump water from the ground or to run gristmills. Likewise, water power had long been used by our ancestors to run sawmills, textile mills, paper mills and gristmills. A neat STEM/history- related project for a teen would be to research, compare, and contrast a small farm windmill design that may have been used by an ancestor (and many of which are still in use around the world today) with a modern wind turbine design. Renewable energy is becoming a larger industry every year, and many of our kids who are interested in science and engineering could find themselves someday employed by one of these companies.

-Entertainment: Challenge your kids to go a whole day (or more) without entertainment requiring electricity or batteries. No TV, computer, video games, phones, or tablets. Learn and play a card game or board game that you know your ancestors enjoyed. Read books, play musical instruments, take a hike, or spend some time at a park. Our ancestors found lots of way to enjoy their free time before the advent of electricity. One of the easiest ways in which we can reduce our carbon footprints is by using less electricity, and cutting the gadgets out of our lives, at least temporarily, can have other benefits for our families as well.

These are just a few of the ideas that you can use to infuse your family's history into an educational discussion surrounding past and present environmental issues. I'd love to hear more ideas, if you have them!

©2018 Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Wishful Ancestry

3/6/2018

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#WishfulAncestry // GrowingLittleLeaves.com

As genealogists, we all work hard to find out where our ancestors came from. We might use a paper trail, DNA, or some combination of both, but once we trace our families back to other continents, nations, and/or tribes, we often develop a kinship with those people and places and strive to learn more about those areas' cultures: the food, dress, music, traditions, language.

Have you ever developed an affection for a culture or ethnicity to which you are NOT connected by blood? Not to imply that we shouldn't be proud of our true ancestral heritages, but have you ever had feelings or elements within your personality, style, belief system, or values that seem to connect with people of other ancestral backgrounds?

St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner. It's always such a fun and meaningful holiday for people with Irish ancestry, and I've always admired the culture, strength, and tenacity of the Irish people. I've always wanted to be Irish, but I'm not. I file Irish ancestry under my category of 'wishful ancestry.'

My kids have heard me talk a LOT about their ancestral peoples and cultures, so today I asked them a different kind of question: Where do you WISH your ancestors came from?

My 7 year old daughter gave me two answers: Hawaii & Alaska. I think we can thank Disney's Moana, along with her love of beaches and the ocean, for the Hawaii response. And a couple of years ago, we took an Alaskan cruise and learned a bit about the native culture there. (Frankly, I was thrilled she remembered!) My 10 year old son told me he would love to have ancestors from Peru or Mexico. I asked him 'Why?' and he mentioned how much he liked the ancient pyramids the Inca and Mayan civilizations built. Again, we've had the opportunity to explore some ancient Mayan ruins in Mexico, so it was a culture and a history that he had been exposed to in the past (and obviously admired).

Their answers demonstrated something important to me: When we are exposed to different peoples and cultures and learn a little about them, we admire them more.

I thought about the potential of doing this exercise in a larger group of unrelated children or teens. For example, go around the the group and have each person share an ethnicity that they wish were part of their personal ancestry. Ask them to share what they admire about those people and their culture. This is an exercise in imaginative thought with the goal of getting a discussion going about appreciating elements within all cultures, whether we are connected by blood or not.

Another idea is to have two kids 'exchange' an ancestral ethnicity with each other, with each child researching the history and culture of their friend's ancestral origins. Kids do culture and nation reports in school all the time, sometimes even researching their own ancestral origins, but this idea gives that project a little twist. How much better would a child appreciate a friend's ancestral heritage if they themselves had done a little research on that nationality and/or culture?

Feel free to use the hashtag #wishfulancestry on social media to share your thoughts on the ancestry YOU wish you had in your family tree. I'm genuinely curious to see if other people sometimes connect with with ancestral heritage they are not connected to through bloodlines. And, if others do start participating, search the hashtag and see what others might say about YOUR ancestral backgrounds - it can be a powerful thing to witness others speak highly of the peoples and cultures that made your family.

©2018 Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Directory Detectives

1/29/2018

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Directory Detectives // GrowingLittleLeaves.com

This month's Family History for Children Blog Link-Up theme is Teaching Children Genealogy SKILLS. This is a subject near and dear to my heart, because this is mostly what I have blogged about for the past four years or so. I am ALWAYS looking for new, age-appropriate ways in which to introduce kids to skills that, as a genealogist, I use everyday (sometimes without even realizing I am doing so).

My kids are a little older now (10 and 7), so I want to encourage them to start looking at more actual record sources I use in my research. However, I don't want to overwhelm them with complicated documents and difficult-to-read handwriting. So, I thought we'd do a little something with city, town, and county directories. Directories are one of the most valuable sources of data for genealogists, and they are also one of the most simple to understand, which makes them perfect for kids to explore.

Most children today have probably never even seen, let alone used, a telephone directory. So, the first step in this activity is to explain to them what a directory is, how it was used at the time it was printed, and what important information we can learn from it. The best way in which to do this, I believe, is to physically SHOW a child an actual directory. Now, I'll be the first to admit that when we receive our local directory, it usually goes straight into the recycling bin. But, if your area still prints directories, show one to your child, or make it a point to look at an older one during your next trip to the library.

Because names and words are sometimes abbreviated in directories and those abbreviations needed to be deciphered, I decided to approach this with my kids as being a 'detective.' My daughter wanted to dress the part, and honestly, the magnifying glass came in handy, because the print in these directories can be so small.

I sat down with my daughter and gave her an 'L' page and the Abbreviations page from a 1936 Cleveland directory. I explained that this page was part of a list of people who lived in the city that year, and that they are listed in alphabetical order by last name. (She is familiar with 'ABC' order, because her classmates use it to line up in school each day.) I wrote down the surname we wanted to look for (Licciardi), and helped her find it.

Then, I showed her how she needed to decode some of the information. The first name after the surname was the husband's name, followed by the wife's name in parentheses (I had to explain what those were). I showed her how to look up 'embdr' in the abbreviations page, which she learned stood for 'embroiderer.' (I explained it as 'fancy sewing.') And, of course, I told her that this was the entry for her great-great-grandparents, Louis and Adele Licciardi. (If you have photos of the ancestors you are looking up in the directory, this is a great time to bring them out, so the child can make the connection between the faces and names.)

Next, to contrast the urban directory, we looked at a rural farmer's directory from my husband's side of the family. My daughter enjoyed decoding this one more than the other, because it told her how many kids, horses, and cattle each couple had. She went down the page trying to figure out who had the most of each. I do think it's a good idea to have kids look at different directories from different types of areas, just to show them that one directory may offer certain information that another one does not. And what's included in a directory may be indicative of what was important to a particular community at the time it was published.

Searching around in directories is a great activity for helping kids practice their knowledge of alphabetical order. I volunteer with 3rd-5th graders once a week in our school's library, and they still struggle (a lot) with using alphabetical ordering. It's a skill that is learned through practice.

Once your kids master the straightforward information contained within a particular directory, go a little deeper:

- Ask them if they see multiple entries of the same surname living at the same address. Chances are those people are either immediate or extended family members.
- Talk about some of the different occupations you see. If a job is unfamiliar, look it up to learn more about it. Talk about which jobs still exist in modern society and those that do not.
- Encourage them to type a street address that they find into Google Maps. They may find an image of an ancestral home on Google Street View!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you encourage the children in your lives to explore historical directories!

©2018 Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Family Storytelling With Steller

1/3/2018

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Family Storytelling With Steller // GrowingLittleLeaves.com

Like it or not, the children of today are a digital generation; they've known no other world. If we want them to connect with their family history, we must find ways in which to not only make family history relatable to their lives, but to also bring it to media in which they are the most comfortable, namely social media apps, videos, and websites.

Steller is a simple, free mobile application that is wonderful for sharing family stories across social media. The app allows you to construct family stories using a combination of photos, videos, and text, and then allows you to share your story through social media, or to embed the story within websites, as I have done below. The app itself is its OWN social media network; it is free for anyone to join and you can follow other users, view and 'like' their stories, and even comment on them!

To begin using Steller, first you must download the app to your smartphone or tablet.* It is available for free from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Next you need to create an account, which you can do using either an email address or through your Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram account. If you use an email address, you will see the right-hand image to create your username and password.

*There is no iPad-specific version of the app, but the iPhone version works just fine on iPads.

Email Sign Up Page

The main interface from which you control the app has five icons at the bottom that look like this:

Main Interface Icons

The house icon is your 'home' screen and shows you the stories of other accounts that you follow. The magnifying glass is the search feature, where you can search other peoples' stories by hashtag or just browse the different categories of stories. The lightning bolt shows your notifications, and the person icon is your profile page, where you can manage settings and see all of the Steller stories that you have personally created.

The '+' symbol in the middle is where you create your own Steller stories. When you click on it, first you must choose a layout for your story. There are 11 themes from which to choose. You can click on any theme and see a preview of what the page templates look like. Keep in mind that the content within these sample stories will be replaced by your own photos, video, and text, so you are really just deciding on the design elements like font and background color. (The story embedded above was created using the 'NICO' theme.) You can change a story's theme at any time - even after you start adding photos and text.

Choose a Theme interface

After you choose your theme, you are given the opportunity to upload up to 20 photos and/or videos into your story. I typically chose to just upload ONE photo to get started because the app automatically places your media into various random layouts, which I rarely keep as I work through the story. So, I upload one photo and am brought to a screen with these choices at the bottom:

Story-Creating Icons

These icons are pretty self-explanatory. When you click on the 'Pages' icon, you are able to delete pages by swiping upwards and you can reorder pages and change the theme very easily.

Delete pages by swiping upward.

Reorder pages by dragging pages to new location.

A couple of more tips: Layouts with text can be edited simply by touching on the text box, deleting the sample words, and adding your words. Some text boxes also give you the option to change features such as font size, color, and alignment, although not ALL text boxes give you that option. In the image below, the 'Title' text box gives you these options, but the text box below it only allows you to change alignment.

Text editing options

And even after you have added your photos to a layout, simply by tapping on the photo, you are given options to crop the photo or replace it with another.

Photo cropping and replacement options

Steller has been around since 2014, but it really hasn't taken off in the same manner as Instagram. Making stories with Steller does take more time and thought than simply posting a few photos on other social media networks, but the amount of depth and emotion that you can create within a Steller narrative, in my opinion, far exceeds what you can do with other apps at this point. In the Steller story embedded above, I combined my grandmother's photos with her words that she recorded in a journal. I enhanced the story with documents from her military file. When I show this to my kids, I feel like I'm giving them more than if I were to just show them a photo or document - I'm putting it all into the context of a more human and creative way of understanding - a STORY. The simplicity of the app combined with the relative brevity of the stories and its digital nature means that children will not only love to scroll through these stories, but will be more likely to want to create their own ancestor stories using the app. (I have lots of ideas about how to utilize this app in teaching my children how to create and use timelines in genealogy research!)

I would really, really like to see more family historians using Steller to get the non-genealogists in their families more interested in family history. Let's face it, presentation and aesthetics matter when telling a story, not just to kids, but to everyone nowadays. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

©2018 Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Remembrance Candle Bunting

12/22/2017

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Remembrance Candle Bunting // GrowingLittleLeaves.com

The holidays are usually joyous times to get together with our families, but sometimes they can also make us a little sad because people with whom we used to celebrate are no longer with us. I wanted to create a kid-friendly, visual way in which families can remember their loved ones who have passed away, so I give you the remembrance candle bunting.

In many faiths, cultures, and traditions, lighting a candle has been a way in which to symbolize the presence of a deceased loved one. Lighting actual candles isn't always the most practical thing, especially with children around, so my kids and I instead decided to create a paper candle bunting to hang in our home.

I found this simple candle design on OpenClipArt.org. If you click on the image below, you will be able to download a PDF containing two different sizes of this image, depending how large you'd like to make your bunting.

Next, we glued an image of a deceased loved on onto each candle and wrote their name below. Then, I cut little slats in the upper part of the candle to make holes for the yarn to pass through. (Using a knitting needle made threading the yarn through the holes SO much easier.)

Once you have all the candles on the string, find a central place in your home to display it! We strung it across our fireplace mantle. This is a great way in which to remember loved ones, especially around the holidays, or even during large family events, such as reunions.

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Disney Pixar's 'Coco'

12/20/2017

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Coco Movie Review // GrowingLittleLeaves.com

Today, my children and I went to see the newest Disney Pixar movie, Coco, and it is so wonderfully centered on family history that I feel compelled to write about it here.

Coco is the story to Miguel Rivera, a boy who absolutely loves playing the guitar, but must keep his love for music secret from his family. You see, his family has shunned all music since his great-great grandfather seemingly abandoned his family for his musical career many, many years ago.

On Día de los Muertos, Miguel inadvertently goes on a journey to the Land of the Dead and meets his ancestors. In order to get back home, he must receive the blessing of his ancestors. But what blessing will he receive? Will he be able to continue to play his beloved guitar, or will he have to accept his family's wishes and give up music forever?

Visually, this movie is a beautiful tribute to Mexican music, culture, and the traditions behind the Day of the Dead. There is a heavy emphasis on the purpose and importance of the ofrenda (ancestor altar), and since we had just recently created one in our family, my kids were excited to see that in the film.

This film is FULL of conversation-starters you can use with the children in your family to talk about different aspects of family history, and I've listed some of them below. (I have attempted to keep these listed themes spoiler-free, but if you really want to know nothing about the film, perhaps stop reading here.)

1.) Sometimes we feel a special connection to an ancestor who we've never met.

2.) Our eldest living family members are important bridges between our living family members and our deceased ones.

3.) We exist only as as long as we are remembered. It the responsibility of living family members to share the memories and stories of the deceased ones, so they can continue to live on through the generations.

4,) Our ancestors may have done something that seemed to be dishonorable, but perhaps we should not judge their actions until we know (if ever) the entire story behind those actions.

5.) Our family may try to prevent us from doing certain things out of love, in an attempt to protect us from hurt, or to try to prevent us to go down a path that has caused hurt in the past.

6.) Sometimes who we THINK we are related to ends up being an incorrect assumption. (Am I right, researchers??)

The Coco movie and related books can be ordered via Amazon.com via the affiliate links below; just click on each image. (A small percentage of your sale comes back to support Growing Little Leaves.)

©2017 Emily Kowalski Schroeder