We recently learned that  the Mongolian emperor Genghis Khan was not only ruler over  a vast amount of land merely  he  was also  the  patriarch over i of the largest family trees that  has ever been  traced.   He tin exist credited with an amazing 16 million descendants.

At first, Nicholas didn't know what the term "family unit tree" meant so I took some time to show him Genghis Khan's lineage while we were visiting the Irving Arts Center. We talked about genealogy, the divergence betwixt a descendant and an antecedent, and how people research their family unit trees then that they can learn who and where their family came from.

She Is Dallas info: You can acquire more about Genghis Khan'due south family tree too equally  many other fascinating facts most the leader and  Ancient Mongolia past visiting the Genghis Khan exhibit at the Irving Arts Center through September thirty, 2011.   Check out the Irving Arts Center website for more information or follow Irving Arts Center on Facebook.   She is Dallas is working with the Irving Arts Center to promote the showroom online.

Nicholas started request questions nearly his own family tree and seemed interested in learning more.   And so we started with a trip to our library. You can find everything at the library! We found several books about family unit history written on a child'south level so that they were easy to understand.

family history books

We decided to just start with a very basic family unit tree of four generations – Nicholas, parents, grandparents, and dandy grandparents. I found pictures of everyone and printed them in a thumbnail size but you could just cut out the faces from any size picture that you already have printed. I got some 12×12 cardstock, record, and a marking.

thumbnail pictures for project

I explained to Nicholas how the term "family tree" works well for researching family history because of the many branches in the family that come from a single trunk. Nicholas cut out a tree form from the light-green and dark-brown paper.

boy cutting green paper

Nosotros cut out all of the faces for our project so Nicholas started placing them on his tree. He started with himself and Rachel and easily placed most of the other faces in their proper places on the tree. He either hasn't met or doesn't remember much near his great grandparents so he needed assistance with those. He as well had problem when working with some of the maiden names that he has never heard of.

working on family tree

He had fun placing all of the faces in their proper  place. He said it was just like a puzzle.  Wow!   I'k then glad that he can understand why  people have so much fun  researching their family tree.  It'southward really just the ultimate puzzle with answers to be found all over the globe in all different periods of time.

Nicholas  added the lines to bear witness the relationships for all the people and he was done.  He is much more proud of his projection than I  would have e'er  expected.

family tree

Nicholas couldn't wait to show off his family tree. Nosotros got on a Skype call with my dad  so that  Nicholas  could show  him the tree. The two of them  started talking about the people and my dad shared more stories nigh their ancestors  in the pictures, who fought in a state of war,  and even what life was like when he was little.

Skype Call

I could see Nicholas getting excited and actually interested in these stories that my dad shared with him.   I think he normally  might have just brushed off these stories and non paid attention to the old man blathering away about people he's never met.   Just having the tree in front of him, he could run across these people's faces and sympathize how he is related to them.   It seemed to bring the stories to life for him.   I'k and then glad that we took some time  for him to learn about this  fascinating part of his history.

To get started tracing your family history, ask your family some bones questions nigh names, dates, and places of your ancestors.   There are so many incredible resources bachelor to make it easy to make full in more gaps of your story with just a little flake of information that you can gather from living relatives.   Libraries are a great identify to start.   Many have special genealogy sections with printed family histories and demography records.   You tin can also check court houses for birth, marriage, and death records also equally country deeds to larn more than most your family and where they came from.

In addition, in that location are also plenty of websites to help practice family history research online.   Here are a few that I've used in the past.

National Archives

Family   Tree Enquiry

Ancestry.com

Researching Your Family Tree

Take fourth dimension now to assist children  learn well-nigh  their family tree and the stories from  their family unit history so that this rich history can be preserved for future generations.

Additional posts near Genghis Khan:

Genghis Khan Exhibit: Games

The Disintegrating Outfit

Barbarian Summer Army camp

World Tour "Genghis Khan: The Exhibition" Invades Irving

Kids Activities Web log is Holly'due south blogging home.

She is the co-writer of 101 Kids Activities that are the Bestest, Funnest Ever! and The 101 Coolest Simple Science Experiments.

She is the mom of three boys ages 13, 15 & 17 who partially homeschools. She believes that you shouldn't accept to buy stuff to have fun when there is a kitchen junk drawer full of possibilities.