Dear Members and Friends of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Miami,
Since the Corona Pandemic I've had plenty of time to return to the genealogy research I started more that fifteen years ago. When I opened my ancestry.com account this morning I noticed a feature on the home page that I had not noticed before. The image includes two links to the National Archives and Records Administration Free Access (https://www.ancestry.com/cs/nara) and Free K-12 Educational Resources (https://www.ancestryk12.com/k12/resources/).
The first link takes you to an instructional page for researching family on the National Archives and Records Administration website. The second link provides links to family history lesson plans and a link to download a book with resources for teaching family history in the classroom.
The lesson plan core topics are: 1940 Census, The Census and The Constitution, The Census and the Depression, Autobiography, Biography, Immigration Over Time, Civil War, Military/Civil War, Personal Side of the War/Revolutionary War, War of 1812/Privateers, Mobilization for War/WWI, Battles/WWII, Local History is Your Community History, Historic Crime, Haunted House, Suffrage Movement, How Life Influences Art, African American Congressmen, Trail of Tears.
Sample lesson plan links:
Even though I retired as an educator many years ago I plan on using this lesson plan guide as a starting point for conversations with my grandchildren. Since summer camp plans have been cancelled Camp Grandma will include family history projects using the ancestryK12 Family History Lesson Plans.
Included in the NARA link is information about Research Guides on Ancestry.com (https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Free-Research-Guides). The guides are an excellent resource for improving your family history detective skills.
