Children’s Family Tree Display

I recently dug out a family tree to show my kids. I’d researched it back in the dim and distant past, and realised that they hadn’t been added to it yet. It’s a long, though not especially illustrious, lineage that I’d managed to take back to the 15th century. This kind of timescale however can be difficult for young children to grasp, so I thought it might be a nice idea to make our very own family tree, for just 3 generations of our more immediate family.

For this activity we used the printable frames which I created some time ago.  If you want to print these out for yourself, you can do so by clicking on the image below, then right click to download. The boys created their family portraits of each member of the family using the frames. I then stuck them onto card, and cut them out – I did this myself because the card was fairly stiff. I also punched a hole at the top for ribbon.

We then decorated the frames using self-adhesive sequins and jewels and glitter glue, though I ended up doing most of the glitter glue decoration, because we found they didn’t have the control to make patterns with it themselves. Although I didn’t think it mattered how perfect or otherwise the decoration was, I didn’t protest too hard because I enjoyed doing it!

Once dry, we cut lengths from 3 colours of ribbon (colour-coded for each generation) threaded them through the holes, and then hung them from some leafy branches cut from the garden.We hung grandparent’s portraits from the top-most branches, and children’s  at the bottom, with those of my own generation in the middle.

All in all it made a pretty good display, and one which I think would look just as good on branches without leaves.