Youth Family History Challenge

In addition to my calling in YW, I was asked back in July to head up a family history challenge for our youth in the ward.  I initially had a committee of youth that helped come up with some ideas and goals and then we went ahead with it.  We had a kickoff in October when DH and I taught a combined YM/YW lesson on family history and what it involves (which was unfortunately interrupted with a fire alarm) and then we had a point system set up for the youth to earn points by doing specific things regarding family history.  We had one of our mutual nights where we taught 3 different mini classes on some specific family history topics that the youth could work on.  We had a rewards jar made where the youth would put pom-pom balls to represent the points that they have earned and then if they fill the jar by the middle of January they would earn a carnival type party.

Things started out a little rough and I think I made it a little too complicated at first, but then the holidays hit and we had several weeks where we didn't have any mutual activities at all because of the holidays so we decided to extend the challenge into March.  After the new year I changed things up a bit and printed out a specific weekly challenge for the youth to try and focus on each week - simple things like writing in your journal to finding an ancestor in the 1920, 1930 or 1940 U.S. census - with specific instructions on how to do it.  We have also tried to have a family history moment in YW and on mutual nights where one of the youth talks about something they have done with family history.

I think overall it has been a success for the youth.  We have heard stories of the youth coming home from an activity and getting their parents involved in looking things up on the internet.  We took a trip to the family history library where the youth were able to print out 9 generation fan charts so they could see where the holes are in their family.  We have also heard stories of grandparents being interviewed and families hearing stories and things that they had never heard before.

This is one reason that I have been behind in blogging lately.  This challenge has been somewhat time consuming for me and sometimes when I do have free time I find myself wanting to get onto the familysearch.org website and do some family history work instead!  Right now I am in the middle of planning the rewards activity which will be next Wednesday for our mutual night.  We are going to do a life-sized board game with the youth in "family" teams and it will be as if they are on a pioneer trek across the plains to Utah.  Hopefully it will go off well and the youth will enjoy it!  I will try and get someone to take pictures for me so I can blog about it more in detail.