Tuesday's Tip - How to encourage interest in genealogy for our young people.

A day late (hey it was St. Patrick's Day - a little busy here!). First off WELCOME to our newest LVUG Community members, we passed the 900 mark this week. It is good to know there ware many Legacy users out there who want to learn about Legacy and share their knowledge with other Legacy users.

There has been some recent conversation about getting children (perhaps your children or grandchildren) more involved or at least a bit interested in genealogy and our family trees. I find what works best is to focus on them! A few ideas:

(1) interview them for their events/facts - what would they like included in their individual report (we have included school, sports, sacraments, and physical description). Run through the event/fact titles and ask them what they would like to include. If you need some notes for any of these events/facts, encourage them to help write the story and be sure to include photos (whether you attach media to your events or reference the media in the notes). I have done this with their school photos and birthday parties. You could also interview them and have a recording. Be sure to have them sign their name at various times so you have an example of their handwriting. 

(2) have your immediate family members fill out a census - since it is 2015, be like some of those States that took a census on the 5. Grab a blank version of the 2010 census and gather as much information as you want about these families by doing your own personal census (when and where born, where parents were born, current residence, residence in 2010, occupation, education, etc.) It's your census - what questions do you wish were on the government ones?

When I work on projects like this I try to make it fun or a bit of an event itself  - bring lunch or go out for ice cream or coffee after the interview.

What are your ideas for getting the younger ones into your Legacy database and sparking that interest?