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Identifying Female Ancestors: Name Change Flashcards & Matching Game

10/21/2016

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Identifying Female Ancestors: Name Change Flashcards & Matching Game from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Let's face it - keeping female name changes straight in our family trees can be confusing for even the most experienced genealogists. Imagine our children's confusion, then, when we introduce them to the women in their family tree, and they are confronted with the fact that one female ancestor had two or more surnames in her lifetime. 

I've created a printable for making female ancestor flashcards that can help a child associate one woman with her different surnames. The printables have a place for a photo, and also spaces in which to write both a woman's birth name and her married name. (And there is even a template if a woman was married more than once.)

There are a couple of ways in which you can use these templates:

Idea #1: Cut along the solid black perimeter lines only. Place a photo of a female ancestor or living female relative in the square below. Then, write her full birth and married names on the appropriate lines. Fold along the dotted lines to make a handy, foldable flashcard.

Idea #2: Cut out along ALL lines, completely separating each square and rectangle from the others. Using the pieces from at least several different women, ask the child to match each photo to the correct names. You can place magnets on the backs of the pieces to make a fun fridge game!

These would be great activities for kids to do at a family reunion!

Identifying Female Ancestors: Name Change Flashcards & Matching Game from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Name Change Flashcard: One Marriage
Identifying Female Ancestors: Name Change Flashcards & Matching Game from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Name Change Flashcard: Two Marriages
(Click on either image above to be directed to a downloadable PDF that includes both templates. For added durability, I recommend printing on cardstock.)

And, hey, if you have a woman in your family tree who married more than twice, let me know and I will make a foldable flash card template appropriate for her!

©2016 Emily Kowalski Schroeder. All rights reserved. Worksheets and printables for personal use only and may not be reproduced or redistributed without written consent of owner.
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Cemetery Freestyling With Kids

9/26/2016

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Cemetery Freestyling with Kids from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Cemetery Freestyling. Is that a real phrase? Well, if it wasn't before today, it is now. Cemetery freestyling is what I call going to a cemetery for no reason. You aren't going to visit, look for, or photograph any particular grave or group of graves. You're not looking for people of any specific time period or surname or for any specific grave symbols or shapes. You go just to go - maybe with the intent of getting some mild exercise or just getting out to enjoy nature a little bit.

I've previously written about doing organized cemetery scavenger hunts with my kids, but we also LOVE cemetery freestyling, especially when we travel to different places. It's a great way to learn about local history, people, and burial customs. We've done it with our kids in Memphis, New Orleans, and even just a county over in Indianapolis, but we had never done it in our own town until this past weekend. 

We are not locals to this town, and neither I nor my husband have any ancestors who ever lived in this area. We've lived here for only about five years, but, to our kids, this is really the only home they've ever known. My 3rd grade son had mentioned that they have talked a little bit about town history in school recently, so I thought, 'Why not take a little walk through the local cemetery and see what we can find?'

One of the great things about not looking for anything specific is that you can let the child(ren) guide your path through the cemetery. They are then free to gravitate towards what appeals to them aesthetically, explore what they find interesting, and formulate their own questions about individual graves and grave markers.

Indeed, the first aspects of the stones that kids tend to notice are the differences in shapes, sizes, and colors. As we walked through the cemetery, I asked my kids questions like, "What shape do you like best? Why do you like it? Which stone shape do you think was the hardest to carve?"  I think when we adults are on a mission to find a particular stone or family plot in a cemetery, we tend to bypass some of the wonderfully beautiful and artistic stones and stone carvings that belong to other families, so I highly recommend cemetery freestyling for adults as well!

Cemetery Freestyling with Kids from GrowingLittleLeaves.comMy daughter's favorite stone.
Without any suggestion from me, my son brought along his sketch book. He loves to draw, so I thought maybe he wanted to sketch some of the more unique stones, but instead he decided to write down a list of surnames that caught his eye. (He is a bit of a busy-body and likes to have something to do, even when we just do things for fun.) 

I followed along next to him and coaxed him to look at information beyond just the surname. He discovered that one stone listed the grave's occupant as a member of the Ohio Cavalry, while another was written in German, so we talked about how a person might be born in one location, but buried in another. Stones can give important clues about a person's place of birth. 

I also encouraged my son to use the years listed on the stones and figure out how old a person was at the time of death. So, we had some practical math mixed in there, too.

Cemetery Freestyling with Kids from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Ohio Cavalry Member
Cemetery Freestyling with Kids from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
German Writing
My daughter is just learning how to read, so my husband and I had to read her the names when she asked what they said. However, she does understand how to read years, and she had a good time practicing that skill when looking at the stones.
Cemetery Freestyling with Kids from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Reading the years.
We found U.S. Military Veterans from the Mexican War, Civil War, WWI, and WWII. We found entire families buried together, and talked about family plots. We found stones bearing the names of town streets and parks, and talked about how town landmarks are often named after local pioneer leaders or the families who once owned the land. For example, we found this older stone bearing the name of Morton Green. Green Street is one of the major roads in our town, and I asked the kids if they thought maybe it was named after him. We came back home and confirmed via Google that indeed it was. And we also thought it was cool that we found a person born in the 1700s in the cemetery - not terribly common in this area of Indiana.
Cemetery Freestyling with Kids from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Gravestone of Morton Green, one of our town's major street namesakes!
Autumn is a GREAT time to visit cemeteries, so whether you are traveling to a new place or sticking around your hometown, I encourage you to bring the kids to a cemetery - ANY cemetery - and see what you can all find and learn!

©2016 Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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All Aboard The Surname Train!

8/23/2015

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Kids love trains. They love watching them, playing with them, and riding in them. So, I thought, why not design a family history activity that is centered around trains.

Introducing the Surname Train! It's a very simple concept: One engine per surname, and then each individual family member gets his or her own train car, on which his/her photo and full name are included. Kids are able to visually put the faces with the surnames.
The Surname Train // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Surname Train
The train cars attach to each other and the engine using self-adhesive Velcro circles, which you can buy at any craft store or big-box store. This way, once you make several surname engines, you can make it a game, and ask the child to match the cars to the correct surname engine. I also love this interchangable aspect of the activity because I can show with the child how married women can actually be a part of two (or more) surname trains.
Surname Train // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Close-Up of Self-Adhesive Velcro Circle
I laminated the engine and cars for durability, but you do not have to do that. Also, when doing this with a child, I encourage you to ask the child to color or decorate the engine and cars. Let the child show off his or her creativity in this project.

With older children, you may want to write birth years on the back of each train car, and then ask them to put the cars in chronological order when assembling each train.

And, hey, my train engine and cars template is FREE! Click on either photo below to be directed to a downloadable two-page PDF for your personal use. Simply print, cut, and create!
Surname Train FREE Printables from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
FREE Surname Train Printable
Surname Train FREE Printables from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
FREE Surname Train Printable
©2015-2016, Emily Kowalski Schroeder. For personal use only. May not be reproduced or redistributed with out written consent of owner.
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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:
Tracing and Writing Surnames // GrowingLittleLeaves.com

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:
Surname Mapping // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
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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    Emily Kowalski Schroeder

    Founder and Author of Growing Little Leaves

    Emily Kowalski Schroeder / Founder and Author of GrowingLittleLeaves.com

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