Your little one just walked in the door from school and announced that she needs to create a family tree for a class project.

In this day and age with families spread from one end of the country to the other, the ties to the past are often murky at best. You want to help your child, but heck; you don’t even remember your grandparents’ full names.

What do you do?

Here are some basic ideas to help your little one get beyond three-block tree without doing the project yourself:

1 - Do share what information you can. For example, details about yourself and your spouse. Where you were born and when. Let them know about your wedding and the dates of birth of their siblings, if any.
2 - Give your child access to a family member who might be able to help. Call your parents or your spouses’. An aunt or an uncle. Let them interview relatives for assistance.
3 - Provide them access to the Internet. If your family is spread out, but uses the Internet, let your little one e-mail them for help. Ask family members to help fill out the tree with names and dates.

Once your child gets back the basic information, help her create the tree without doing it for her. Should the information beyond your parents still be murky, see what the two of you can find on the Internet. You might not be able to find all the answers there, but perhaps you can fill in some of the blanks.

Children are naturally curious about themselves and their family, this project can serve as a great catalyst for her to learn about where she comes from and how your family got to be where it is today.

Whether you create only a brief family history or manage to trace it back seven generations or more, make sure she enjoys the effort and learns from the research experience. Regardless the outcome, your little one will be sharpening skills that will serve her well in the future and she just might learn to appreciate the ties that bind family a little more along the way.

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