Monday, November 11, 2013

Family Tree Craft

November has always been a time for me to think about family and family history.  From Day of the Dead to Thanksgiving, it just feels like a month for reconnecting with living family and remembers those who have passed on.

My favorite part about family trees is that they give kids a visual reference for how everyone is related.  I remember as a little kid that figuring out which grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. went with who and why some knew each other and others didn't was sometimes a little confusing.  So I decided to make a very simple family tree with Chiquita.

I just had Chiquita tape everything up to a door in a part of the house where we could leave it and look at it during the month.  We started with the literal tree - first the trunk and a few leafy bunches. We made it small enough that there will be plenty of room to add more to our tree.

Then we added a photo of her at the base, Mommy & Daddy at the fork in the tree, Mommy's parents on one side and Daddy's parents on the other.  We added a few more leafy bunches to make room for Mommy's grandparents above Grandma & Grandpa.  As a final touch Chiquita added some flowers to our tree for decoration.

We don't have photos for Daddy's side so we need to make some requests before we can grow our tree taller, but my hope is to keep this up until we get more photos.

2 comments:

  1. This is a great idea to make a visual for family members. When I was in high school I was surprised that my brother still didn't have all our aunts and uncles straight. With 14 sets it got a little confusing! This would have been helpful :) Thanks for linking up at After School!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Certainly. Visuals help in explaining cold data, into something that is living and breathing. Among the advantages of the net is that it accommodates this, and allows that data storage be informed in ways that paper data normally couldn't.

    Ruby Badcoe

    ReplyDelete