Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Thank you Grandpa--Our teenage experiment

The great ally I have in getting the kids interested in our extraction project is my Grandfather Alvin’s book about his father Joseph. We read the short first chapter about Joseph tonight. Joseph left home to go to boarding school at the age of 10. That resonated. Then it talked about how he did in school. Score again. Everybody is doing homework and worried about grades all the time around here so that’s something that they could relate to. Then, guess what was in the book? An 1876 report card from the Congregational School in Lewisham. Instead of As and Bs, they were scored by their standing in the class. Joseph had 100 people in his class in school, and he was 7th in Greek, 6th in Latin, 11th in Math, 8th in English, 6th in Scripture, 5th in French, and 5th in German. See, I told them they had smart DNA.

Thanks Grandpa for preserving that report card, and putting it in a format that was accessible to me and my kids. Thank you, Thank you.

2 comments:

Lisa said...

I am enjoying reading about how you get your teenagers involved in genealogy. I'm still working on mine.

Ned Cannon said...

When I heard Elder David A. Bednar's 10/1 LDS conf. talk on teenage involvement in family history ("The Hearts of the Children ..."), I knew that was something our neighborhood youth should do. A few years ago, I volunteered at the Ogden Regional FH Center and mainly helped youth get started using the old DOS program and converting to PAF. They were excited! Now technology is advanced and kids are even more skilled. So I have been promoting the idea with our youth leaders and our grandchildren since Oct. conference. Thanks for sharing your experience in such detail. Success to you!