Genealogy, history & kids

Several years ago (when our oldest was in 5th grade) we were living in Alabama and we started to study a year in the Civil War (that's what our boys interest was at the time.....yes we do homeschool :) I wanted them to have a tangible way to develop memories, yet get involved in Genealogy, bring in the history and learn!  So we started a Civil War Scrapbook for the kids.

Now we started this in the 5th grade (our oldest son just graduated HS) but it was an ongoing project as we visited places.  You know as a homeschooling family, we couldn't resist planning out trips & vacations around historical sites :)  That's the beauty of it all!  Anyways we helped to build their scrapbook.  One section was their field trips that were centered on the Civil War. At first I had them hand write out their narration of their trip but then there were errors and it was hard with a pen.  So then we taught them to type on the computer and we printed off their narration.  That not only help with "neatness" but also if we had to raise the font number on the print we could or if we had to make it smaller, we could.

The next section is labeled "My family in the Civil War".  We went through our genealogy and found photos and info on their family members that fought throughout the Civil War and on both sides too.  That was fun especially when you find out one grandfather fought in the same battle as another but one was on the Union side and the other was on the Confederate side.

This is Elisha Riley Williams.  My husband's GGG Grandfather who fought in the Civil War on the Union Side. He fought at Vicksburg, MS.

Then there's James Ambers Washington Cook (top left) who fought on the Confederate side for the Confederates.  He was my GGG grandfather.  

This is George Herzog.  He was my GGG grandfather.  We have his photo here with his enlistment and discharge papers. (if you follow his link, you will also see him in his uniform from the Civil War with his medals.  We were unable to fit it into the Scrapbook as the photo came later).

The last section was their favorite men in the Civil War.  They gathered photos (their favorites).  We also had a homeschool group in AL where we did a living history day.  The kids would dress up in character and give a report on their favorite person.  You can see that year our son did Stonewall Jackson.  I shrunk the report down to fit onto the page.  Below is a photo of him dressed up :)

I hope this helps you guys understand how to use homeschooling, scrapbooking, history, Genealogy and FUN all rolled into one.  Let me know if you have any comments or questions!