When children are around 6 years old they begin to take an interest in the family. They want to know what it means to be cousins, uncles, grandparents ... one way to make them understand relationships is to make a family tree with them. You know, those trees that we have seen in the illustrations with thousands of characters. For your children it is easier, and depending on the family and the curiosity of the children make them much more simplified.
We give you some ideas on how to make a fun and useful family tree. It is much more than a craft to spend the afternoon, it is also an activity in which children better understand family ties.
Why is it so important for children to know the family?
There are children who have thousands of questions about the family or who the parents of their grandparents were. Yes you can Show them photos or personal items and tell them anecdotes one of those that are passed from generation to generation. Now is your time to broadcast.
The child must feel part of a family, in his own social and emotional development is vital. From her they will learn who they are, develop your personality and they are the ones who support them.
Make a genealogical tree is to help them understand graphically how close others are to them. And like grandfather or grandmother, it is also of the other cousins.
If in your family there is children of different parents, you will have to take it into account in the tree that you make at home. And in the same way, if your partner is not the father of the children, you will have to teach him the difference.
Let's make a tree with cardboard and photos
One of the easiest ways to draw a family tree is to do it on poster board. This is one very useful formula for the little ones, that you can complicate if there are older brothers. The days before the activity you can ask your parents, brothers and sisters and brothers-in-law to send you a photo and print it. So the boy or girl can hit it.
With a piece of brown cardboard, or newspaper cut out the trunk of a tree. Make it really thick. Then decide up to which lineage you are going to reach, for example to the child's great-grandparents. In that case you will have to make 4 branches, or four branch floors. Then cut out a bunch of leaves and ask the child to paste the photograph of each family member.
In each branch place the couple who are having their children, without there being a correlation of your brother-in-law's parents, for example, but only appearing as your sister's husband. Help the child to place them and clarify that parents are both children of other parents, and those of others ... and so they will understand.
Family tree using CD
If you still have CDs in your house, the kind that you no longer listen to or are scratched, you can make a original and recycled family tree, that you can later hang in the room.
En cada CD paste the photo with the name and degree of relationship of the person of the family that you want to represent. It can be a photo or a drawing that the child has made.
At the top put the CD of the protagonist boy or girl, and his brothers and sisters if he had them. Paste the discs that represent mom and dad underneath. And below them those that represent grandparents.
If, for example, the child has a brother from another father or mother, you hang a blank with another CD and put the picture of that little brother. And you link it with the maternal or paternal grandparents. But only with them, not with the trunk of the family. Cousins or cousins can come out of the uncles' CD. You can put each one on a CD or put all the photos of the faces together.
These are just a few ideas, but surely you can think of many more.