Family Tree

Our theme for the week was "Family."  So we started with trip to the library to look up books on family.  We found a few good ones:

Families by Ann Morris. It's from 2000 and the cover makes it look like it's about a Mexican family but it's about families from everywhere and what makes a family a family:

Todd Parr wrote a book called The Family Book.  Our library didn't have it in stock but I got another of his books called We Belong Together (about adopted families which still kind of works for other families too).  I would have rather gotten this one though:

Older kids would have fun with The Family Tree Detective by Ann Douglas.  It has good activities for elementary to junior high kids on making a family tree, understanding the connection between family members, and interviewing grandparents:

We also practiced writing the names of our family members.  I tried to get the kids to sound out each name and come up with what letter makes that sound.  Then I helped Abby write the names and Isaac wrote for himself.

Then, for our art project for the week, I decided we would make a FAMILY TREE.  Here's how we did it:

Step 1:  While the kids were occupied elsewhere, I spent some time gathering pictures of our family members.  I had big dreams of extending to Adel's and my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, but after it took me an hour to collect just the kids' cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, I decided that had to be good enough.  I even had to get creative (er, ghetto really) and take pictures of a few framed photos because I didn't have up-to-date pictures of everyone.  This was by far the most time consuming part.

Step 2: I did an online search for "tree coloring pages" and came up with this page among many.  I picked my favorite tree, adjusted the size and printed one for each child to color in.

Step 3: I helped the kids cut and paste the photos of our family members in the proper order on the tree.  

Then we drew lines connecting parents to children.  Since we didn't have a picture of the other more extended family members, I used this opportunity to talk to the kids about where those familiar people would fit into the tree.

Extras*
It was also fun to have the kids make a phone call and do a short interview of their grandparents.  To keep it simple, we asked each grandparent 3 questions:

1. Where were you born?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What is your job?

Finally, I wrote down the kids answers to these fill-in-the-blank statements:

1. When I grow up, I want to be like __________ because __________.
2. I have a lot in common with ___________ because we both like _______________.
3. My family gets together to celebrate __________________.  We celebrate by _________________.
4. Our favorite family meal is ______________________.
5. You can tell we are a family because _______________.

My favorite:

Isaac: "I have a lot in common with Abby because we both like being noisy."

*If you're interested in the page I typed up to record the interviews and the fill-in-the-blank, I'd be happy to email it to you, just post your email address in a comment or send me an email.