Family History Game

I decided it was time for my kids to find out more about their roots. 

To do this I made two sets of cards. 

 The yellow cards have the name of the family member on one side and some interesting facts about them on the other.

The grey cards have the ancestor's picture on one side and their name on the other. If I had known I was going to post this on my blog I would have used better penmanship.

We went back three generations. It was really important to me to find a photo of each individual because just having a name to look at (in ugly handwriting) is not enough, especially for kids. At first I didn't think I'd be able to find photos for all of them, but luckily I found some family history books with photographs so even my most elusive ancestors could not escape my grasp. I took a photo of the photograph with my camera and then printed it out of my printer in black and white. Then snip-snip, paste-paste. Not perfect, and probably not worthy of Pintrest, but definitely worthy of the Dyreng family table.

Here is my dad. Wasn't he a hunk?

 I put heart stickers on the cards of all my favorite ancestors. Just kidding. The hearts are for the people who have died.

Luckily Scott and I don't have heart stickers on our cards.

There were lots of different games we could play with these cards.  First I split them into teams to see if they could get them into a family tree only by using their names.

It was interesting to see who they knew about and who seemed unfamiliar. Ironically the most perplexing card was their only living great grandparent whom they visit twice a year and we pray for every night. They didn't know who she was because we always call her "Grandma Great."

Great-grandmas have names, too, by golly.

 Then we matched the names and the photos together and we read the interesting facts about each individuals. Scott and I filled in with some stories that we knew about the ancestor. Brief stories.

 I also included cards with my kids' photos, names and interesting facts. They liked that the most, of course.

 With all the cards on the table like that they could see their namesakes, which is pretty cool since each of my kids share their first or middle name with an ancestor.

 Family night lasted only about 20-30 minutes. Any longer than that and the Holy Ghost starts banging his head against the wall.

It was a successful night, of course. I only tell you about the good ones. :)