Make Summer Work For You: 9 ways to a family history win!

Most people find they have more time for hobbies and interests during the summer than the rest of the year. Perhaps it’s the long days and nice weather that give us more energy to broaden our horizons and inspire our creativity.

Whatever the reason, summer is a great time to focus on family history research and unlock new clues into your family’s past.

Here are nine ways to ramp up your family history research and make the most of those long summer days:

1. Spend quality time with family: Close or far, it’s important to strengthen family bonds. Encourage sharing memories, photos and family heirlooms. Use the MyHeritage Mobile App to add photos while you’re on-the-go.2. Plan a family reunion: No one will turn down a party invite in the summer!

3. Preserve old photos: It’s a big job to digitize old photos, but it couldn’t be more important! Take the time to preserve and store old photos and documents for future generations.

4. Plan a geneajourney: Travel to meet family members that live out-of-town, adding details to their branch of the family tree. Alternatively, visit a place where one of your ancestors once lived, to see places meaningful to them.

5. Track down lost relatives: You may already have many names and addresses available. Otherwise, use MyHeritage research tools to find long-lost relatives who are still living. Contact them through the site and arrange to meet.

6. Create a family tree poster: Family tree posters are special and can be created on your family site in just a few clicks. Take the time to customize the poster and make it perfect for your tree. The summer is also a great time to start thinking of family holiday gifts.

7. Create a family cookbook: Collect recipes from family members and create a cookbook of recipes handed down from your ancestors.

8. Read up: Reading books about when and where our ancestors lived may help us open more doors and provide a better understanding of their lives.

9. Organize files: We all know that  organizing our files and documents are important, but we don’t often get around to actually doing it.  Take advantage of long summer days to organize and label files for future reference.

How do you plan to take advantage of the summer and learn more about your family history?