My family story
History · Early Years · The School
Asking someone who was there
Ask a parent or grandparent: what did you play with? What was school like? Did you have a phone? Their answers are EVIDENCE, and asking a person who was there is called ORAL HISTORY. It is one of the oldest ways of finding out what happened.
Same and different
Some of their answers will surprise you and some will not. Children have always played, argued, and had favourite food. What changed is the things around them. Sorting their answers into 'same as me' and 'different from me' is real historical comparison.
Memory is not perfect
Sometimes two people remember the same day differently, and neither is lying. That happens to historians all the time. When two accounts disagree, we do not throw both away — we ask what each person saw and why they might remember it that way.
Ask someone older these three, and write down their answers exactly. (1) What did you play with when you were my age? (2) How did you get to school? (3) What was in your house that is not in mine? Now ask a SECOND person the same three. Where the answers differ, ask why — different family, different place, different year — because that is how a historian handles two accounts.