What...
Lost Rolls America (LRA) is an online national archive, free and open to the public. It showcases photos and memories, and the role that photography has played in our lives over the years.
The Lost Rolls America Parent Activities grow from the LRA archive and make use of the images there by fostering family-based conversations about photography, the past, one’s personal heritage, and much more.
How...
Lost Rolls America Parent Activities guide you in exploring your family history and incorporate multiple styles of family engagement. Examples include: the Lost Rolls America “storymaps,” digital sites that make use of visuality and design, engaging the audience in investigating the history of photography and the LRA archive itself. You will explore the early days of the camera and learn about the value of archives. You may even come to realize you have already unknowingly created your very own archives! Other examples of fun, creative ways to engage the family entail: journal writing (written reflections on family and photos), arts and crafts-based endeavors (make a family crest!); and photography, including the present-day recreation of an old family photo!
The Lost Rolls America Parent Activities website includes seven individual activities, organized by topic. Scroll to the bottom of the main page to access the seven activities. Each activity itself has instructions to guide you and has links to worksheets (when needed) and other elements, such as external websites. Such additional elements enrich the entirety of this hands-on, fun experience. If printing of worksheets is not readily accessible, a notebook or scrap paper will suffice.
You and your family can determine which activities to do, what order to do them in, and the pace at which you do them. Activities can be done back-to-back, day after day, or you can take breaks in between activities, staggering them over days or weeks or months. As you begin your family history investigation, you may be inspired to branch out beyond the immediate family, working with relatives, in-laws, and other loved ones to complete these related activities and to share insights, whether in person or remotely.
Why…
There is no better time for these activities than now!
We live in an image-saturated culture and sometimes experience information overload. These activities provide time to slow down, work carefully with images, and build family knowledge and bonds.
The Lost Rolls America Parent Activities offer vital lessons on family history and personal archiving in an engaging, stimulating, fun-for-all-involved way. Discover unique family details, hear new stories about relatives, and see into the past through photography! In looking backward, you pass on the legacy of a family and learn to archive material for current and future generations.
Share your work!
The activities will guide you through various forms of archiving, and you are encouraged to be creative beyond the activities. Try scrapbooking your worksheets and photos! Assemble a new photo album. Have fun and connect with family across generations!
Lost Rolls America Parent Activities also recommend PixStori, a digital platform that allows you to organize your images and text and which can enable families to create galleries of their photos along with captions and even audio recordings. Please visit www.pixstoriplus.com for further instructions. Once your family creates a gallery, you will have the choice of keeping the gallery private or making it public to share it with a larger community.
Finally, Lost Rolls America Parent Activities encourage you to share your work on social media. Post to your own accounts using #LostRollsAmerica!
We would also love to feature you across our social media channels. Specific instructions on this are included in the individual activities. Submit your work to info@lostrollsamerica.com. Please follow us on Instagram at @lostrollsamerica, Twitter at @lostrollsameric, and on Facebook to see your work featured!
*Must be 18 or older to submit content to Lost Rolls America.