The first one is easy, at least once a week, tell your family a fun story about an ancestor. If you don’t know one, ask your parents or grandparents about their parents or grandparents, then write the story down. It also helps to have a pedigree chart mounted to a wall somewhere, so the family sees how they are related to the person. Once you have several stories in your archive, you’re ready to play. We usually play this game while we’re traveling in the car. Sometimes we even play it on Memorial Day. We visit the cemeteries that our relatives are buried in and talk about them while we’re standing by their grave side. So, I call the game “Name that Ancestor!” Usually I start, I say, for example: “I’m thinking of an ancestor who was a fur trader and wrote a journal.” Then they guess who it is, “John Sayer”.

They won’t know who it is, unless I’ve talked about that ancestor before. If they guess and they’re right, it’s their turn to give a glue. If no one knows, then it’s a perfect opportunity to tell them the story. Then they will know the next time we play.

The next game is Concentration. This is especially good if those of your family, still living, live far apart from each other. First, get as many pictures of them, living and/or deceased, as you can. They can be small, like a snap shot. Make copies so you have two and you won’t ruin the original. Use tape (packing tape in perfect) or use contact paper and attatch them to a 3×5 card, cut in half or something about that size. I like to use the lids from orange juice concentrate (get it? concentrate?) ha ha. They stack really nice and they fit in a empty tennis ball container. Another twist is to put the picture of the ancestor on one lid and their name on the other lid. They make a match when they find the picture and the name that go together.