Connect!
Growing Little Leaves: Genealogy for Children
  • Home
  • About
  • Mission
  • Activities
  • Printables
    • Ancestor Worksheets
  • Books
    • Grandparents and Memory Journals
    • Immigration
    • Africa
    • Black America
    • Canada
    • East and Southeast Asia
    • India and Bangladesh
    • Latin America
    • Native America
  • Resources
  • Contact
  • Blog

Research and Source Documentation for Pre-Readers

9/18/2016

0 Comments

 
Hands-On Research and Documentation Activity for Pre-Readers from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Teaching kids who can't even read yet the basics of research and documenting their sources? Can't be done, you might be telling yourself. But I will show you a simple, hands-on activity/game I developed to teach young children to do just that! Admittedly, this is not an activity that will teach children anything about their individual ancestors, but it introduces an important SKILL that is necessary to learn, not only for genealogy research, but for research in virtually ALL academic fields.

In simple terms, research is just one big scavenger hunt, which is already something kids LOVE and are fully capable of doing, even at young ages. Documenting research sources is something none of us really like to do, but we know that it's necessary in order to have a successful research outcome. As with any activity, the keys to making this work with young children are to make it short, hands-on, and FUN!

You will need:
4 small (Amazon-sized) boxes 

12 manila file folders
Construction paper or cardstock in four different colors
Computer with printer and clip art worksheets (see end of blog post)

Glue Stick
Clear tape
Scissors
Pencil
Clipboard (optional)


This activity consists of four numbered boxes: 1, 2, 3, and 4. Each box holds three manila folders labeled A, B, and C. Each of those folders holds four clip art images, for a total of twelve images per box. Each box has it's own theme: Animals, Food, Transportation, and Sports. Each image in a folder is covered by a different color: red, pink, blue and purple. (The colored paper is just taped to the white paper along the top, so you can still flip it upwards.)

Hands-on Research and Documentation Activity for Pre-Readers from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Food-themed Box with Folders
Hands-On Research and Documentation Activity for Pre-Readers from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Color flaps that cover each clip art image.
Aside: Since this is a genealogy blog, you may be asking why I didn't use photos or other images pertaining to our family tree. The purpose of this activity was to teach the method of looking for something and documenting it, so I wanted my daughter to not get bogged down with details of dead people. That is why I chose simple, familiar images from everyday life. With older children, you could absolutely rewire this activity using images from your family's history, and they would still benefit from learning the method by which they found the images. I'm thinking about trying it with my 3rd grader - I would have categories for people, heirlooms, buildings, and jobs.

This is one of the worksheets I created that my daughter used in this activity. First, I explained to her that the picture on the left is what she needs to find.​
Hands-On Research and Documentation Activity for Pre-Readers from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Next, I showed her the numbered boxes with the folders in them. The boxes are 'labeled' with clip art images that more or less show the category of pictures that are found within that box (see photo above). When we are researching in a library, we don't look for sports books in the food section, so this was a simple way to talk about that concept when you are looking for something in a research setting.

When she did find the image she was looking for, I explained that she should circle the number of the box she found it in. Then, she had to circle what letter of folder it was in, and finally which color the image was under. After we did the first one together, she caught on quickly and did the next two by herself.
Hands-On Research and Documentation Activity for Pre-Readers from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Hands-On Research and Documentation Activity for Pre-Readers from GrowingLittleLeaves.com
The real teaching moment in this activity is when we gave her completed worksheet to big brother and asked him to find the pictures based on her worksheet notes. He was able to do it MUCH quicker than she originally did because she had essential mapped out where each one was located. And THAT is why we write down where we find things when we research anything. :-)

If you would like to try this activity at home, below are the links to the clip art images and documentation worksheets I created. All of the images are from OpenClipArt.org, so if you'd like to create your own set, I suggest starting there. As always, a link to this exercise will be included in the Activities page of the Growing Little Leaves website.
prereader_research_and_documentation_worksheets.pdf
File Size: 1070 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

animals_clip_art.pdf
File Size: 912 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

food_clip_art.pdf
File Size: 577 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

sports_clip_art.pdf
File Size: 563 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

transportation_clip_art.pdf
File Size: 775 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

box_label_clip_art.pdf
File Size: 488 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

©2016 Emily Kowalski Schroeder. Worksheets for personal and educational use only. 
Print Friendly and PDF
Add to Flipboard Magazine.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Emily Kowalski Schroeder

    Founder and Author of Growing Little Leaves

    Emily Kowalski Schroeder / Founder and Author of GrowingLittleLeaves.com

    Categories

    All
    Ancestors
    Ancestor Worksheets
    Archiving
    Books
    Cemeteries
    Charts
    Colors
    Conferences
    Drawing
    Editorials
    Fashion
    Games
    Hands On
    Heirlooms
    Holidays
    Immigration
    Interviewing
    Maps
    Math
    Movies
    Newspapers
    Occupations
    Photos
    Programming
    Roleplay
    Science
    Storytelling
    Surnames
    Technology
    Timelines
    Tracing
    Vocabulary
    Writing

Home

About

Mission & Philosophy

Activities

Printables

Resources

Contact