Playing for Ancestors

We know that it’s stories that stick. If you want children engaged in the stories of their ancestors, work the stories into their games. Children are also naturally curious, so adding story cues into playthings can make the stories all the more interesting.

Ahead of this year’s holiday season, we’ve been looking at projects that might be gifts — with the hook of family history. On Nov-30, we’ll feature Simon Davies, Projectkin member and founder of WeAre…[xyz] to talk about a project he’s created for his own family. The project customizes standard playing cards with the stories and photographs of each of 52 ancestors (#52Ancestors).

The secret to this project is the combination of ordinary playing cards with an online archive to host his stories and of course, Simon’s ready with his WeAre.xyz archive. QR codes connect each card to archive profiles for each ancestor. The archive provides a private and safe place to view the stories themselves. In this example, he’s made the profiles public but access is constrained to profiles of living people in his archive. You could duplicate this approach with any kind of online page, though we love this easy solution to archiving and privacy.

In this Project Recipe event, Simon will share how he put it together including printer resources, tips, and lessons learned. Our program includes his talk as well as a Q&A session.

At the conclusion, we’ll share the Project Recipe (a written summary of how you can reproduce the approach with your own family,) as well as a recording of the session. You’ll also have the opportunity to discuss the project and variations with other participants in our community forum. This program is free and held via Google Meet. Join us, won’t you?

After registering, you’ll get a confirming email and a calendar event invitation you can use to set your preferred reminders. You’ll also receive news about other family history project events. All emails will come from projectkinorg@gmail.com. You can unsubscribe at any time.