Introduction
Your child may be very interested in where he/she fits in to your family, and who all their other relatives are and how they fit in.
Making a family tree is a great way to explore and explain your child's extended family - and to produce a work of art to decorate their room.
Make space on the tree for new 'branches' to be added, so your child can add extra names and pictures when there are births and new partnerships.
How CBeebies can help
Have some fun together exploring the Story Time and Watch & Listen sections of the CBeebies website for everyday tales and short video clips which depict family life among humans and animals.
Programmes such as Baby Jake, Grandpa In My Pocket, Charlie and Lola and Let's Celebrate all feature families and will give you a good starting point.
The relationships between family members are usually explained or you could point out how the characters are related, e.g. Charlie and Lola are brother and sister.
How to make a magic moment
Put together your own family tree. For this you will need:
- large sheet of stiff paper
thick poster paints - glue
- selection of family photographs which you don't mind cutting up or photocopies of them
- information about family members (e.g. when they were born, when they married etc.)
Paint a tree on the paper, with a short stubby trunk and four branches.
On the trunk of the tree - at the top - help your child place pictures of his great-grandparents. Then, on the four branches coming out of the trunk, he can place pictures of his grandparents. If you have a 'blended' or step family, you may need more branches, either at that point or on other branches.
As you develop the tree, your child can paint further branches and twigs, as needed.
The newest members of the family - your child's generation - can be at the end of a branch.
