One of the more obvious changes that has occurred between me and my children's generation is photography. I still have shelves overflowing with photo albums of my childhood and teenage years. While they don't often get looked at, it's great to know that the memories are there and at certain times they are a great reminder of my life. Building a history together is one of the strongest bonding experience's people can have. It's particularly important for families as so often in the rush, routine and distractions of life we forget how much we have shared together. Furthermore kids have a way of focusing on the negatives and can forget the many awesome times shared together as a family unit. Because photos are almost always taken at our positive experiences it is a great way of remembering the good times. What makes it hard today is that we just don't have the photo albums to turn to. While more photos are taken now than ever, they rarely leave the digital world and are therefore rarely viewed.
One of the great activities I did with my family was have a family trivia night. I loaded a bunch of photos from my phone onto my computer comprising of family times together. There were holidays, school events, weekend trips and around the house shots. I went back about 10 years and gathered a whole range of photos and videos.
I then arranged these on a powerpoint platform. For each picture / video I had a multiple choice question. Examples of the questions included;
- Where were we when this was taken
- How old was Zoe on this holiday
- What was happening in this photo
- What was the most unforgettable event that happened here
- What injury occurred at this time
- What did mum do on this occasion
- Why where we acting like this, etc
For the following picture I asked; Whose birthday were we celebrating and how old were they?
I used a word document to write up an answer sheet and gave one to each member of the family. We got the popcorn out and started what was a wonderful night of laughter and debate. In a way we all experienced those fun times again and it reminded my family that we do have a shared history of many wonderful experiences together.
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