SPANNING GENERATIONS Sharing pastimes and stories can turn into rich reading and writing experiences for your child. Here are a few suggestions on how to share stories and pastimes with your child: Set up family story hour. Everyone can bring a book reflective of when they were young. Grandpa may find a book about a little boy’s life in the ’40s; Mom might bring a book about a little girl’s adventures in the ’70s. Youngsters too young to read can have someone else read their story. Discuss how life differs from one generation to the next as each story unfolds. Tell stories. Reciting a favorite family memory can set the stage for writing. Have grandma or grandpa tell how they met but don’t tell the ending. Have the youngsters imagine and write their own endings. Encourage letter writing. This is not the same as sending an email. Set up a pen-pal system with grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins who live in a different part of the country or the world. Agree on a topic for each set of letters and then set dates when those letters should be mailed. Create a memory box for each person in the family. When it’s your birthday, you receive a piece of memorabilia from each family member for your memory box—a hand-painted picture, perhaps, or a ticket stub leftover from the family trip to the amusement park. Be sure a date is included in decades to come, the materials in those memory boxes will be priceless. Choose a family pet or a best friend. Have each person write a story about this special person or pet. If photos of that friend or pet are easily accessible, bring them along to pass around. Sketch out the family tree. Hopefully, you can go back several generations. Have everyone choose a different person on that tree to research and write about. This may be the start of a bona fide family history book. Write a family history with your child. While this is a project that could take months or even years, a documented family history is something that can be passed down—and added onto—for centuries. You don't have to be famous to write your family history. Everyone has a story. It can contain everything from photos to charts, deeds, birth certificates, death certificates and newspaper clippings. Resources: “For All Time: A Complete Guide to Writing Your Family History,” by Charley Kempthorne. “Writing Family Histories and Memoirs,” by Kirk Polking. “Turning Memories Into Memoirs: A Handbook for Writing Lifestories,” by Denis Ledoux. “Life Writing: A Guide to Writing Family History,” by William Hoffman. “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Your Family History,” by Lynda Rutledge Stephenson. By Mary Kay Shanley