

12 Fun Family History Activities for Your Family
- by Shenley Puterbaugh ·
- January 28, 2021
- · Guest Posts, Hints and Tips
Have you considered incorporating fun family history activities into your family plans for 2021? Whether you are quarantining at home alone or interacting with family members in person, there are ways you can connect with family, anywhere in the world, by exploring your family history creatively!
Combining technology and family history can bring us together in meaningful ways even when we are apart. Here are 12 fun family history activities to do virtually or in-person with family.
In-Person or Real-Time Video Chat
Story Time
People of all ages like to hear stories. You can share the same family stories with family members both young and old. Plan a time when family members can come together on a video call or in-person to hear and share family stories. When deciding what story to share, think of one that would be enjoyable for everyone. If there are others who have stories to share, take turns. Think of props you can use to make the story more visually engaging. Don’t forget to record your story time so your stories can be enjoyed by future generations.
Family Tree Bingo
Plan a family bingo night! Email an invitation to all participants to view your MyHeritage family tree. Have each person create their own bingo card with names of ancestors from the tree. Each person should bring small objects, such as pennies, raisins, or square pieces of paper to use as markers for the game. You, as the host, will need to have a container or bag with each ancestors’ name on a small piece of paper. As you draw a name, call it out and everyone who has the name on their card will mark it. Even if the game is virtual, you can still have prizes. For example, prizes could include a one-on-one phone call with Grandma and/or Grandpa or a surprise in the mail.
Family Trivia Game
There are lots of trivia game formats to choose from. This activity can take the form of Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, or any trivia game that your family enjoys. You can display the game with a poster board or PowerPoint presentation. Draw upon facts, sources, photos, or stories from your MyHeritage family tree to come up with your questions. If the family members participating are not familiar with your family’s history, keep the questions simple. If they know a lot about your family’s history, then make the questions difficult. You can also have prizes for this game.
Item Box
Choose an ancestor you’d like to highlight. Collect items that represent stories from that ancestor’s life and put them in a box. Have kids or family members take turns choosing an item from the box, and share the story that is associated with the item. Make sure to record it so the stories shared can be preserved.
Show and Tell
Gather family photos or heirlooms, and organize a family call or video chat session to show and tell what you know about these items. If others want to participate, have everyone bring an heirloom or photo to show and tell about. Once again, don’t forget to record the call.
Interview Family Members
Choose a family member that you want to learn more about and schedule a time to interview and record them. Be sure to come up with a list of questions to ask ahead of time to help you stay organized and make the most of the time you have together. Get some more great tips on how to interview family members in Genealogy Basics Chapter 1: How to Interview Relatives.
Activities to Do Separately and Then Share
Cooking Show
Have each family unit or individual choose a family recipe. They will then record themselves making the recipe step by step while sharing what they know about the recipe and the person or people who originally made it. The video can be composed of one continuous shot or a series of clips put together using a simple movie-making app. Share the completed video with extended family members. They will enjoy learning how to make family recipes and trying them!
Recreate Old Family Photos
Have each family or individual choose an old family photo to recreate. If they don’t already have one, you can send them one. Once the photo has been recreated, each family can send the original photo along with the recreated photo to everyone else.
Create a Family Playlist
We all have favorite songs, and so did our ancestors! Ask family members to share their favorite song, and ask the oldest family members to share a favorite song of their parents’ or grandparents’. It’s okay if they only remember the artist, or even just a genre. You can choose songs that were popular in the time periods and places of ancestors too! Create a playlist of all of these songs and share it with extended family members. When listening to it with family, you can make it a game and have members guess whose favorite song it is.
Sources to Stories
Compile sources you have saved for multiple ancestors on MyHeritage. Then email each person or family unit all of the sources for one ancestor. They will review the details of the sources and write a short story (as short as a few sentences or as long as a page) about that ancestor. Then, everyone can send each other their stories.
In Person
Learn and Play Games
Discover traditional games from the homelands and time periods of your ancestors. Play them together with your family!
Learn an Ancestor’s Skill
Discover the skills your ancestors had by looking for clues in documents, photos, or stories about them. You can also consider the time period and locations where they lived. Examples of skills that your ancestors may have had could include: soap making, candle making, washing clothes with a washboard, wood carving, playing an instrument or a sport, painting, pottery, survival skills, food preservation, canoeing, bicycle repair, dancing, knitting, sewing, and so on.
Have fun and turn the old memories into new ones together!
Shenley Puterbaugh is the founder of Inspire Family History. Visit InspireFamilyHistory.com and follow “Inspire Family History” on Facebook and Instagram to get more great tips on inspiring your kids to love family history.
More from Guest Posts

Watch It on Replay: Access the MyHeritage Facebook LIVES of 2020
While 2020 challenged all of us in many ways, at MyHeritage it also presented us with new opportunities to get creative. One of the highlights has been an extensive calendar of virtual events. Every week since March, we’ve had the opportunity to get together...

How to Interview a Relative Remotely
Interviewing older relatives is an essential part of genealogical research. They can provide such a wealth of information that you will never find anywhere else. But what do you do if you can’t visit your relative in person? Fortunately, we live in an increasingly...

9 Great Genealogy Resources To Take Your Family History Further
We know the current situation has many of you hunkering down at home. We’re here to provide you with some educational and fun genealogy activities to help you pass the time productively. For example, we recently opened free, unlimited access to MyHeritage In Color™,...

11 Places to Visit in Amsterdam in and Around MyHeritage Live 2019
Have you booked your tickets yet to MyHeritage LIVE 2019? MyHeritage LIVE 2019 is our 2nd annual user conference that will take place September 6–8, 2019 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. With an exciting lineup of lectures and workshops given by world-renowned genealogists and experts,...

Historical Record Guru Mike Mansfield Shares His Story
Have you ever wondered how MyHeritage SuperSearch™ finds the right record you need from among the 9.7+ billion historical records in our archives? Or maybe you’ve pondered the magic behind a Record or Smart Match™. Look no further than the MyHeritage Content team. The...

A DIY Guide To Creating Your Own Family History Video
This is a guest post by Dr. Clinton Moore, founder of Long Yarn Films. After years of interviewing people as a psychologist, Clinton shifted his skills to producing family history and life story videos in Sydney, Australia. His genealogy journey began when he realized his...

Family Skeletons: Don’t get spooked!
Are there any skeletons in your family’s closet? If you dig back far enough into your family tree, you are likely to uncover something scandalous. This Halloween, we thought we’d share two of our blog’s most frightful tales: Imagine the horror of discovering that...

For the Record: Watch out for errors
This post is written by Schelly Talalay Dardashti, MyHeritage’s US Genealogy Advisor. Human beings do make mistakes. Remember the old proverb: ‘To err is human, to forgive divine’? Genealogy’s version should be: ‘To err is human, to correct genealogical.’ Every family historian and genealogist...

Searching for Biological Relatives: From DNA Test to Reunion
This is a guest post by Richard Weiss. Richard is the Executive Vice President and Director of Programs at DNAAdoption. He found his birth mother through a traditional search and birth father through a DNA search. He is an experienced genetic genealogist and adoption...
Share