Today I’m sharing a guest post from Charlotte Barnes, author of the new book Turning Little Hearts: Over 90 Activities tot Connect Children with their Ancestors. Charlotte is sharing a fun idea for teaching children about the character traits of ancestors by creating a man out of a paper bag! This easy activity takes minimal time to set up and provides an opportunity to learn about ancestors in an engaging way. To watch a video of...
A couple years ago, I made photo felt family trees for my nephews and niece for Christmas. I glued velcro to the back of each circle so the kids could move the family members on and off of the family tree and play. This is a wonderful teaching aid or storytelling aid that I use often when I’m teaching children about family history and relationships to ancestors. I wrote a tutorial for making your own...
One of my favorite family tree creations for kids is this felt family tree. What could be more fun for a toddler than moving around pictures of the people he loves and sticking them to a tree?! What’s even better is that this project requires no sewing. All you need is felt, family pictures, glue, fabric scissors, a way to laminate your photos (even packing tape could work) and about an hour and a half....
For Father’s Day, my kids and I came up with a project to learn about fathers in our family tree and how they are courageous, strong, generous, and kind…like super heroes! We also made a “Super Dad” card that you can draw a picture of dad’s face on (or glue a photo onto it). Here are the printables ! Super Dads In My Family Tree To learn about the wonderful qualities that dads in our...
We had the best time yesterday doing this inter-generational heirloom activity. What objects from the past have you kept because they have special meaning to you? What has been passed down in your family? Do your children know about them? Kids and families can work together on this heirloom hunt to learn about the heirlooms in their family. My son recently interviewed his grandparents over video chat to fill out his inherited traits chart. We...
I asked my 3-year-old daughter if she knows what it means to be brave. She didn’t. I told her that it means “doing something you are afraid of, or doing something that is hard.” Then I read Seven Brave Women with her. We discussed several different ways that everyday women in the past were brave. Seven Brave Women by Betsy Hearne is a story about the brave deeds of the author’s ancestresses. Each of them did something...
I went to a wedding a while back and I decided to make them a “wedding family tree” chart for their home. I’ll share what I made in case you would like to make one. I used PowerPoint, since I don’t have fancy photo editing software. I like PowerPoint because you can change the size of the canvas and then save it as a .png file or .jpg file. Once you’ve done that, you can send it...
For May, the Family Locket Book Club for Kids is reading “Me and My Family Tree” by Joan Sweeney, illustrated by Annette Cable. We are sharing two family tree projects to do along with reading and discussing the book. This post contains affiliate links. If you click the links and make a purchase, we receive a small commission but it doesn’t change the price of the item. Kids love learning about their place in the world....
For this month’s Kids’ Book Club we’re reading Loreen Leedy’s book, Who’s Who in My Family Tree? It’s perfect for teaching kids about family tree diagrams, second cousins, great uncles, and great grandparents, and you can even create a fun family tree when you’re done reading. Who’s Who in My Family? By Loreen Leedy (This is an affiliate link. If you click the link and purchase the item, we receive a small commission but it doesn’t change the price of...
For Christmas last year, I hosted a craft night for my friends. We made these easy, quick photo pendants! I first saw these at a family reunion, where some of the adult granddaughters had created them for the girl cousins. I thought they were so pretty and so symbolic of keeping memories of family close to our heart. These photo pendants make unique, affordable gifts. For the girls in my husband’s family, I made six of the...