“Where did you play when you were little?” can lead to a place a child has never seen: a shared courtyard, a kitchen doorway, a patch of ground beside an apartment building. A sheet of paper gives that conversation somewhere to go.
Try drawing one small place together, adding details as someone describes them. A doorway and a few pencil marks are enough. If you’re looking for Nestie, meet the assistant within Nestify. This activity needs only paper, a pencil and someone willing to talk.
Choose one place and draw the first feature
Let your relative choose what to describe, leave out or stop discussing. The Oral History Association’s core principles emphasize the narrator’s choice about what to share.
Keep the invitation small: “Could we draw somewhere you remember spending time as a child?” A whole neighborhood may be too much for this page. One corner of a courtyard gives you a starting point without needing an address, a year or a complete family history.
Here is a fictional example throughout this article. Mara is describing a courtyard from her childhood; her nephew Leo holds the pencil. Their dialogue and drawing are invented to demonstrate the activity. With your own relative, use what that person actually recalls.
Leo asks, “What should I put on the paper first?”
“The door into the courtyard,” Mara says. “There was a step outside it.”
Leo draws a short horizontal line near the bottom of the page and writes door underneath. He leaves most of the sheet empty above it. Mara points just beyond the line, and Leo adds a narrow rectangle for the step.
They now have two marks to refer to. Leo does not need to make a handsome picture of the house. He can ask, “Are we looking out through the door?” before adding anything else. Mara says yes, so he draws a little arrow from the doorway into the open space and labels it looking out.
That arrow gives their next conversation a direction. The page can stay rough, with room for corrections.
Place the remembered details beside each other
Mara remembers a tree and somewhere she used to sit. Leo’s next job is to find their positions in relation to the door and step already on the page.
“There was a tree on the left,” Mara says.
Leo puts a small circle directly beside the step. Then he checks: “Beside this step, or farther into the courtyard?”
“Farther out,” Mara says. “Still to the left when you were coming through the door.”
Leo crosses out the first circle and redraws it higher on the left side of the paper. He has changed one relationship, without guessing how many feet separated the tree and doorway.
Leo keeps the outward arrow visible as he adds the circle. If he turns the paper to write a label, the arrow still names their shared viewpoint.
Their rough drawing develops like this:
| Feature | First mark or question | What stays on the page |
|---|---|---|
| Door | A line near the bottom | “Door,” with an arrow showing the view outward |
| Step | Rectangle just outside the door | A step touching the doorway |
| Tree | Circle beside the step; “Here, or farther out?” | Circle farther into the courtyard, left of the outward arrow |
| Place to sit | “Was that under the tree?” | A separate note: “Low wall to sit on; location ?” |
Mara remembers sitting on a low wall, but cannot place it confidently. Leo leaves that note in the margin. Drawing the wall under the tree would turn his suggestion into part of her account.
If symbols become confusing, add a tiny key. National Geographic’s explanation of maps describes a key as a guide to what a map’s symbols mean. Here, circle = tree is sufficient. Leo’s question mark means they have left a location unresolved.
These are remembered positions, not surveyed measurements. Keep the page’s title modest: Mara’s remembered courtyard. An empty corner does not need another building, a path or a flower bed just to make the drawing look finished.
Add one remembered moment to the drawing
Now choose a feature already on the paper and invite a moment connected to it. Leo points to the step: “What do you remember doing there?”
In this fictional exchange, Mara replies, “I sat there waiting for my cousin. I could see him when he came through the courtyard.”
Leo asks, “Was that every day?”
“I don’t remember that. I remember waiting there one afternoon.”
He writes beside the step: Mara remembers waiting here for her cousin one afternoon. He leaves out “every day.” There is no need to supply a season, the cousin’s age or what happened next unless Mara volunteers those details.
The Oral History Association’s interviewing guidance recommends open questions, attentive listening and follow-ups that clarify what someone has said. For this drawing, one detail is plenty to follow.
If a child asks whether the cousin brought a ball, the relative might remember, might not, or might prefer to tell something else. An unanswered question can sit beside the page. It does not need an invented answer to complete the scene.
Read the caption back and invite corrections. Ask Mara whether she wants this version kept and who may see it. A private drawing is a complete activity, too.
Leo’s final page contains a door, a step, a tree, an unplaced wall and one afternoon someone remembers. When they put the pencil down, the question mark can stay.