Find a Family Tree

It's a "game" to see how many family members we can find.


SET UP:

• Draw a leafless tree on the board.
• Have a laptop on the front table (I'll use my kids' VTech laptop thing. I wrote "Family History Center" on a paper and taped it over the Lightning McQueen logos.)
• Put leaves up on walls around room.

DO:

1. Teach the song. I used these actions.
2. Do "family history work" by having a child come up to the "family history center" (computer on table) and pretend to type while everyone sings  Family History, I Am Doing It
3. Then have the child find a leaf, on which they find a name. Congratulate them, read the name, tape the leaf on the board.
4. Invite the next child up, sing, repeat
5. ...and so on

TAKE IT ONE STEP FURTHER (and add some gross motor movement) [worked well for my SR Primary]:

• Pass out names (who are the same as on the leaves). I made the girls pink and in a pink envelope - same for the boys in blue - and asked them to take one name. 
• Before you dive into the steps above, ask the kids to take one name out of the envelope.
• Tell them they are people waiting to be found by their relatives. And explain to them that;
• When the name on the paper they have has been found they sit up in the front. The group in the front will grow as the activity goes on.
• At the end explain go over with them how hard it was for them to wait for their name to be found - and how exciting it was when they did get found! Etcetera...

The leaves getting their names on them.

--- Some have a single name.
(because sometimes you only find one name at a time)

--- Some are in "families", with Mom, Dad and kids. Some are groups of siblings.
(because sometimes you find names in groups. Am I right, or am I right?)

Post-activity notes:

• This didn't hold JR's attention as well as I would have liked. My hubby was in the room and he said it was okay. But my JR was having a wiggly day. Maybe it was just the day. Some days are like that. But JR did really like the actions for this song! Win!
• After it's done I can see that JR wouldn't have gotten the gross motor part (and their Teachers would have had to be doing all the work), so it was good to only do that part in SR.
• SR loved the gross motor part. They were into it.
• I thought I wouldn't have enough names and I ended up having too many. But somehow it worked out anyway to where the last boy sitting in his chair coordinated with the last name called. WHEW!
• I had to keep reminding the SR kids that the group that got "found" (the kids up front) needed to sing, too! Their singing helped strengthen the power of family history work! (I said something to that effect that they bought into.)
• Luckily I remembered to take the batteries out of the Vtech Laptop  ;)