Category: Maps

Map Reading at the Cemetery

6/12/2018

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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#MyColorfulAncestry for Kids

3/30/2016

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#MyColorfulAncestry for Kids // GrowingLittleLeaves.com

A week or so ago, a genealogist by the name of J. Paul Hawthorne posted an image of five generations of his ancestry, which was color-coded by birthplace. Well, his idea (and his Excel template) went viral, and genealogists have been creating their own colorful ancestry charts and posting them on social media. (Read more about it and download the free template on J. Paul Hawthorne's blog, GeneaSpy.)

Instead of making one for my own ancestry, I decided to go one generation forward and make one for my kids. And instead of limiting it to five generations, I completed the chart until I reached the 'immigrant' generation of each line. As you can see, my kids' Ohio roots run deep, but they also claim ancestors from seven separate present-day European countries. In other words, this is a great opportunity to use their ancestry to teach them some European geography.

My daughter loves to color, so she used colored pencils to fill in the states and countries listed on the chart onto blank, black-and-white political maps. There are lots of free, printable map resources out there on the Internet, but my favorite one is the Maps section of SuperColoring.com.

The color I used for each location on the chart is the same color my daughter used to color that location with. Visually, I think it helps her connect the chart more with the map than if we had used different colors. Feel free to talk about the locations and the individual ancestors as much or as little as your child will tolerate. Perhaps hang the colorful maps in their room or playroom as a reminder of where they come from. :-)

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Ancestor Geography Circles

2/9/2015

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If you are an elementary educator, you've likely seen versions of this particular activity on educational blogs or Pinterest. It's a visual, hands-on way of teaching young children about geographic scale using a series of circles that increase in size as each geographic feature increases in size. My seven-year-old son brought one home from school the other day, so I thought about doing this at home, not only as a way to learn about geographic scale, but also as a way for my kids to learn about where some of their ancestors lived.

Ancestor Geography Circles

First, you need to cut out differently-sized circles on construction paper or scrapbook paper. I used my set of kitchen pots, along with some smaller bowls and cups, to trace circles on the paper. Before making ancestor sets, I highly recommend making a circle set that is applicable to your child. This way, they will be able to compare and contrast their set with their ancestor sets.

You must choose the geographic divisions you will highlight in each set. We did city, state, country, continent, and planet. If you will be doing an international set, as we did here, you may have to equate 'state' with a similar, but different, geographic division - we used the Italian regiones or regions. Of course, I also recommend doing this activity with fellow U.S. ancestors, and for those cases, you could probably even add in the county level and even a street level as the smallest division.

I obtained all of the map images from Google Maps. I printed out names of the geographic divisions and the names of each location, and we glued them under the maps. We dedicated the smallest circle on top to our ancestor's photo and name. We laminated our set for durability, but that's not necessary. Simply punch a hole in the top of each circle and connect them all with a book ring.

Don't forget that this and all my other genealogy activities can be found at GrowingLittleLeaves.com

Copyright 2015, Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Surname Activities

9/20/2014

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To a young child, the idea of having a surname in addition to her first name is sometimes a difficult concept to grasp and understand. But, once a child does understand that some family members share names and that her surname is different from her friend's name, do not be afraid to start talking about your family's history and identity using the surnames in your family tree. Here, I have listed some simple hands-on activities that I have developed to help my kids start to recognize some of the surnames in our family tree. Many of the activities are multi-disciplinary in nature and will also help children with listening, writing, and memory skills.

Tracing and Writing Surnames

Teaching children how to write letters is one of those things in life in which repetition is absolutely the key to success. So, why not spend some of that practice time writing names? If you simply Google, 'blank writing paper,' you will find many websites that offer free, printable preschool and Kindergarten-level writing paper. What if your child is not yet comfortable writing letters on their own? Fortunately, there are also some sites (KB Teachers, WorksheetWorks.com) that will allow you to create worksheets with traceable words. This is exactly what I did for my four year old daughter:

Listening With Google Translate

Last weekend at the breakfast table, I was telling my husband about a surname blog post I had written about one of his German ancestral families with the surname of Waterkotte. I mentioned that I had thrown a Google Translate audio link into the blog post, so that reader could understand better why the surname became Watercutter in the U.S. My six year old son wanted to hear it, so I got out my laptop and played the audio for him. He LOVED it, so I typed in a few other surnames from our family tree and played them in their original ethnic tongues. He was so engaged, and as we were listening to the clips, I was able to mention things like, "This was great-grandma's last name before she was married," and "Grandma K's mom was born in Italy." Using the Sound of Text website, you can play and download an .mp3 audio file of the Google Translate pronunciation of words and phrases up to 100 characters. For example, here is the Polish pronunciation of my paternal grandmother's maiden name, Bodziony.

Matching Activities

Even before children can read, they do have the ability to figure out when two words look the same, and knowing how to recognize the same word over and over again will make learning how to read that much easier when the time comes. So, when you are working on word recognition with young children, why not take a break from some of the typical shorter words like dog, cat, toy, etc. and use surnames? I made a simple matching worksheet in which the child can just draw lines to the same name on each side of the paper. You can include as many or as few names as you want, depending on your individual child's interest and attention span.

Or, you may cut out those names on the sheet, flip them over, and play a traditional matching game with the child. If you find two matching names and you get to keep the pair. The person with the most pairs wins.

Surname Matching // GrowingLittleLeaves.com

Arranging

Perhaps you know an elementary-aged child who is learning how to put words and names in alphabetical order. Or, if you have an middle- or high school-aged child, you can really start to talk about the ethnic origins of individual surnames in your tree. Try sitting down with them, examining the names, and group them into different nationality or language groups.

Mapping

Does your child like looking at maps? The Worldnames Public Profiler website contains a modern-day database of eight million different surnames from 26 countries across the world. Simply type in a name, and the site show you on a map where the name is relatively common, and it will give you statistics on 'frequency per million.' Some regions of the world are better represented than others; for example, most of Europe is well-represented in the data, but, unfortunately, Latin America is not. Here is an example map of Poland using the surname Bodziony:

So, you can see that there are many ways in which to introduce kids to the surnames within their family trees, even if they can yet truly understand what an ancestor is or that great-great-grandpa was alive 100 years ago. If you start talking about and showing them the names now, there is a better chance that they won't be overwhelmed later when they are old enough to begin to understand more of the details associated with their family history.

©2014, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder.

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Introducing Immigration - Part 2

3/9/2014

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Introducing Immigration // GrowingLittleLeaves.com

Introducing Immigration - Part 2

In last week's post, I talked about how I used the children's book, Watch the Stars Come Out to introduce the concept of immigration to my children. Today, we went a step further and did a little map exercise to help them put a more visual component to the concept.

I found a world map that came free with one of my National Geographic subscriptions, and I pinned it to a wall, making sure that it was at a height at which the kids could see and interact with it. The rest of the supplies consisted of different colored yarn or string, tape, scissors and pushpins.

First, I helped the kids identify the United States on the map, and we found the city in which we live. Because we watched some of the recent Olympics, they sort of understand what a different country is, and I explained that, on the map, the countries are shown in different colors. Then, I pointed out Europe, we got out our pushpins, and talked about where each grandparent's ancestors came from. (To introduce the concept of an ancestor to your child, see this post.)

We put pushpins on each European country where their ancestors came from - Germany, France, Italy, Croatia, and Poland. (Supervise the kids closely with the pushpins; you could even use small stickers instead, if you are worried about them getting hurt.) My kids are pretty much European mutts, but even if your family's ancestors originated from one nation, this is still a fun and educational activity to do with kids. At one point, my son asked me, "Why aren't we putting any pins here (*points to China*) or here (*points to Russia*)," and I explained to him that if our family HAD come from those parts of the world, we WOULD put them there, but that's just not the case for us.

The next step was to place pushpins in America as the ancestors' "final destination." If you want to keep it simple, you can place one pin in America and that is fine. However, I wanted my kids to understand that the ship couldn't land in the middle of the country (Ohio) where our ancestors ended up - I wanted them to realize that it had to stop at the coastline. So, we put pins in the port cities where the ships landed - New Orleans, Baltimore, New York.

Then, we connected the European push pins to the American push pins with yarn. We used a different color to represent the different 'branches' of our family. We divided it up by their four grandparents. I created a map 'key' so we would know which color matched which grandparent. (My 6yo can read this key, but I think I may add small photos of each grandparent, so my 3yo can know which color represents which grandparent, too.) This portion of the exercise was a bit more ambitious than it needed to be, and it is not necessary to go into such detail, especially with younger kids. Using just one color of yarn for all ancestors will work just fine, if you want to keep it simple.

And, finally, I cut out little paper ships and attached them to a couple of the yarn strands. As my son said, we made little "zip lines" for the ships. I included one sailing ship and one steamship, and explained that, "Daddy's ancestors came to America on sailing ships and Mommy's ancestors came here on steamships, because they came at different times." He was actually pretty interested in the details of ship technology, and wanted to know a bit more about it than I could tell him just off the top of my head!

At this point, I don't expect my kids to remember where Poland or Germany is the next time they look at a map, BUT even just getting kids to look at maps and to realize that they represent much larger spaces and land masses is an important step in geography education. The activity got my son interested in historical travel, and I think it's important for young kids to realize that people didn't always travel long distances by airplane, like they do today. I'm going to leave the map up indefinitely, so they can look at it and 'play' with it whenever they feel like it. (I put it up it next to our family history wall that I created last year, so, hopefully, as the kids get older, they will transition right from this little world map to the more detailed maps, books, and postcards that tell our family's story.)

Within my map stash, I also found a larger wall map of just the United States. At some point, I'd like to hang that one up, too, and maybe talk with the kids about HOW and WHY our family ended up in Ohio. We could again use push pins and yarn to connect the port cities to Ohio, and talk about the different types of transportation people used before cars, and even before trains, in the case of several of my husband's ancestral families.

©2014, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder.