Books Make Great Holiday Gifts
The Sort Your Story Companion Guides are now available for the MAC and PC! These books contain lessons on using Sort Your Story and learning about genealogical records using the Branching Out series of books.
With the aide of the Sort Your Story Companion Guide, for Windows or MAC, you’ll quickly be up and running, organizing all of your documents, putting the puzzle pieces of your family history together.
The Sort Your Story software is comprised of two main parts: the colorful Sort Your Story Category Folders, providing you with 36 folders for sorting and storing all of your records and documents; the Profiler, a database and mini–word processor in which you input all of your data which works seamlessly with the folders.
This companion guide will walk you step-by-step through the set-up and use of Sort Your Story, and will show you examples of how to use each of the categories.
By using Sort Your Story with the Sort Your Story Companion Guide, along with the genealogy textbook Branching Out: Genealogy Lessons for Adults, you will have a firm foundation of the basics of genealogical research and records.
Visit Amazon to purchase the Windows version and MAC version today. Then visit the Sort Your Story website to purchase and download the Sort Your Story software, if you haven’t already, and get started organizing your family memories.
© 2012 Lorel Kapke, 19201 Sonoma Hwy. #341, Sonoma, CA 95476-5413
5 Ways to Save Your Stories
The holiday season is upon us! How did you spend your Thanksgiving? Were you with family? Did you record the stories shared?
The holidays are a wonderful time to gather together with family and friends, share stories and photographs, and make new family memories. Are you saving these memories and stories? Here are five ways to save your family’s stories and memories.
1. Use Sort Your Story to create profiles on your ancestors and living family members. Record the stories you hear within the profiles. Add photos and documents to enhance the stories.
2. Encourage children to become involved. Give them a disposable or digital camera and let them take lots of pictures of family gatherings.
3. Have a family writing activity. Give each person a sheet of scrapbook paper and a pen. Ask them to write a favorite family story.
4. Create a memory jar and fill it with slips of papers with discussion topics such as Christmases past; favorite ornament; family recipes; family traditions; and any other topics you wish. Pull a topic out of the jar and talk about it. Record the conversation with a video camera or digital recorder.
5. Start a holiday journal. Pass it around during the holiday season at family gatherings and ask people to write their favorite memories. You can add photos and other things to the journal if you wish. Then store the journal with your holiday decorations and bring it out next year.
These are just a few ways this holiday season to record your family memories. Do you have others to share?
© 2012 Lorel Kapke, 19201 Sonoma Hwy. #341, Sonoma, CA 95476-5413
Write Your Family’s Story
Post written by Sort Your Story Founder, Lorel Kapke
For those of us who are not professional writers but want to share family stories, let me share how easy this can be achieved!
Enter information in Sort Your Story
Enter information on family members in the Sort Your Story Software. Add photos and stories.
Create a photo booklet
It was a few weeks before Christmas 2007 and I was preparing for my first family reunion held in the summer of 2008. I sorted through my Sort Your Story Kapke photo file (1800 and early 1900s) and found a few photos of my fathers family, many without names or dates. I created three “simple” photo booklets from scanned photos. In these booklets I included as much information as possible and sent the photo booklets to my father for Christmas.
Interview family members
When I prepared to interview my father at our 2008 Reunion, he pulled out his set of photo booklets and spoke for over an hour! I never had to ask one question! Arriving home, I created many short family videos from “one” interview and updated those “simple” photo booklets to a self-published book our family can enjoy many years to come.
A few of these video’s can be found on my Sort Your Story YouTube and Vimeo page.
Two videos in particular are of my fathers WWII experiences. My project for this holiday season 2012 is to create a book of my fathers WWII experience; easy to complete as my fathers military photos and records are stored within my Sort Your Story photo and military folders.
Update Sort Your Story
The stories are available on my fathers Sort Your Story Profiler database. Organized all in one place!
Are you using Sort Your Story to record your family’s history? Have you created a photo booklet for your family members? If not, what’s stopping you? Organizing made easy, Sort Your Story.
© 2012 Lorel Kapke, 19201 Sonoma Hwy. #341, Sonoma, CA 95476-5413
5 Reasons Kids Should Use Sort Your Story
There are many great things about the Sort Your Story software and many adults are using it to organize their genealogical research. Did you know it is an excellent program for kids? Here are 10 reasons why your child should be using Sort Your Story.
- Easy to use. Kids can create a profile on themselves or an ancestor in just a few clicks. This is a great first step using software as a child enters the world of genealogy.
- It is colorful. Sort Your Story is very visually appealing. Lots of colorful icons are available for all record types.
- It is printable. Once a profile is created and records and information have been added, you can print the information and share it.
- It will keep you organized. Sort Your Story has a folder for every record type you need. Images can be stored in these folders for easy retrieval.
- You can use it for school. Sort Your Story allows you to write notes to accompany each record you enter for an individual. You can transcribe records or write a story. All of this information can be copied from Sort Your Story and pasted into a Word document to write a report for school.
What do you think? Are you ready to share Sort Your Story with your child?
© 2012 Lorel Kapke, 19201 Sonoma Hwy. #341, Sonoma, CA 95476-5413
