Indexing With Kids

I previously posted a basic introduction into indexing. Once you get the hang of it, indexing can be pretty simple and actually kind of fun. In fact, it is even something you can do together with kids, including elementary school children.

Aside from the many spiritual blessings that come from spending time doing family history work, here are a few other benefits for my elementary school kids that I saw when I included them in my indexing efforts:

1. Cursive Handwriting: Doing indexing is impossible without being comfortable with cursive writing. Since some people today never learn to fluently read and write in cursive, this is something new kids will learn while doing indexing. My kids still struggle at this point but they are getting more comfortable with cursive and starting to be able to read it some on their own.
2. Typing: My kids had started learning to type, so indexing together gave them another opportunity to practice. This was nice because they only needed to type small chunks of info--one word or maybe a short phrase--and there was even some repetition in the words or phrases they typed.
3. New Vocabulary: As we did indexing, we encountered a good number of words they didn't know: bride, groom, residence, occupation, etc. It was easy to just explain these and then when we ran into the same words again I was able to quiz my kids to see if they remembered what they meant. Again, there's plenty of repetition, which really helps kids learn words.
4. Jobs/Occupations: Some records we indexed, such as marriage records, included information about occupations. This naturally led to discussions about those occupations and whether my kids would like doing that or what they thought they might want to do "when they grow up."
5. Geography: We found it fun to use GoogleMaps to look up the place names we encountered and see what part of the country/state they were located in, what the closest major cities were, what natural features (lakes, mountains, oceans, etc.) were nearby, etc. This really opened up additional conversations, including whether or not our family had ever been to the area.
6. Goals/Deadlines/Scheduling: Since indexing batches can only be kept for a limited time, my kids were eager to try to finish batches. We weren't terribly successful at keeping track of the deadlines but that also wasn't necessarily our focus. If you wanted, indexing could be a way to help a child or youth improve their ability at making and completing goals, working with deadlines, etc.

I saw a lot of benefit to including my children in my indexing efforts. We had good conversations and plenty of learning and laughing happened too. I'm sure there are other benefits beyond what I've listed above. Some people might not think that indexing is a good fit with younger kids but I didn't find that to be the case. I'd highly encourage you occasionally or even regularly to do indexing together with kids--whether that be your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, etc.