How do we find more information for kids who have so little??

A recent birthday blog by Wendy brought up that some of our children have little or no information about their birth. I’d actually already been thinking about this over the last few days. I can’t recreate the birth experience for them, but maybe I can find some tidbits of information to add to their lifebooks to form some little bit of birth history for them.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

**Do some search about the day he was born. Find out what day of the week his birthday fell on. Research the weather (www.almanac.com/weatherhistory).

**What does his name mean? (look around until you find a meaning you like – I’ve heard many meanings of my own name, some far less interesting than others. This must be true for others, also.) Many descriptions include not only the meaning of a name, but give much background about that.

**List of the top boy/girl names when they were born – www.babynamesworld.com or ssa.gov/OACT/babynames (yes, the caps make a difference).

What other people share her name? Include “a photograph and short biography of his namesake or a list of family people in history who share his name (www.behindthename.com/namesakes).

**Who else was born on that day? Celebrities, musicians, other famous people? Try www.famousbirthdays.com for some suggestions.

**What were popular things from the day of his birth? Popular books? (Try www.usatoday.com/life/books/booksdatabase)

**Popular music? – get a copy? Or lyrics? Sheet music? You can make CDs of the top music from the day/month/year. “Look up what was not at billboard.com (click on “Charts”, then “Historical”); then download them at itunes.com”

**What were the popular TV shows? (Check out: www.classic-tv.com)
What else was popular? Collect magazine clippings or photos of popular things (i.e. cars or movie stars).

**What about costs? A grocery ad from a time near their birth can be fun to look at as time passes. There are a few sites that list prices of several items from the year of birth. Prices of things on day/week/month they were born. (www.thepeoplehistory.com)
Try http://dmarie.com/timecap/ (wealth of information on this site! Neat that it allows you to work on a page of facts very specific to your child.). Another website, http://www.timecapsule.com/Retail/Year_In_Review.htm ,gives many lists of information by year, from 1991 to present.

I found much more helpful information - see my next blog for more ideas!