[Having just had all of our children and grandchildren together for the first time in I don't know how many years, I thought this was kind of an appropriate time to post this article I wrote a while back.]
Many of us were blessed to be able to spend time with close
family and even some extended family this past holiday season. When we don’t
get together often, it gets more difficult to explain to grandchildren how all
these people are related to them. While kids generally are more interested in
just playing with all the cousins, it is nice to inspire a little interest in
family history. While genealogy has never been a burning interest of mine, it
has been fun lately to make connections with cousins I haven’t seen in years.
Of course that always brings up the question of where they belong on our rather
large Family Tree.
Mentioning the Family Tree to your young grandchildren might
inspire images of a large oak or maple tree with people sitting on the
branches. Actually, that’s not a bad way to begin to teach them about the
family heritage. But don’t hang Uncle Vito out on a limb yet. Try this idea I
gleaned from one of my creative daughters-in-law.
Gather pictures from your family but don’t go too far back.
For younger grands ancient family history is too much to grasp right now but
hopefully this project will instill a curiosity for later in life. Start with
the child’s grandparents—you and the in-laws. Then gather pictures of your
adult child and his/her spouse. Next find pictures of your grand/s. If you scan
the pictures into your computer (or have someone do this for you), with a
little help from some editing software, you can reduce the size and even put a
little frame around each picture. Then print them out on your printer on a
sheet of regular paper.
Next, find a picture of a tree in a coloring book, or scan
one from a magazine and print it out on a full sheet of paper. Sit down with
your grand and let him/her cut out the faces of the family members you have
collected. At the top of the tree on one side have them glue or tape the
pictures of the parents of Mom and on the other side, the parents of Dad.
On a lower branch, under the appropriate parents, place Mom
and Dad. Then, in the middle of the tree, your grand can paste his/her picture
and those of the siblings if there are any. What you have is a visual
explanation of how everyone is related—simple enough for a young one to
understand.
For those grands who want to expand on this, make it a
family project the next time everyone is together. They can take their own
pictures and figure out where everyone fits on the tree. Maybe you could even
make a large tree on brown wrapping paper, tape it up somewhere at the house
and let them add their pictures where they fit into the family.
Now be careful. This can lead to phone calls like the one I
got one day from a grandson who wanted me to put his daddy in time-out because
I was his mommy and I could do that.
No comments:
Post a Comment