Key Messages

  • Families can be all shapes and sizes.
  • Some people have family members that are spread across different households, cities, countries.
  • Some people have birth family some people have a chosen family.
  • Families are about identity, care, connection and belonging.

Learning Intention

Students will:

  • Explore and acknowledge the diversity in family structure and composition.
  • Develop students' understanding of what constitutes a family.

Time

30 minutes.

Required Resources

  • Paper cut-outs of human and animal shapes (elderly person, adult, child, baby, puppy, dog, cat, bird, fish) please see templates we have included at the end of this activity.
  • Plain paper for the students to stick their family representations on.
  • Glue, scissors, drawing materials.
Download Required Resources

Teaching Notes

  • Building on previous learning, this activity continues to develop the understanding about personal identity, growth and change, and things we need to sustain us (in this case adults and family). Identifying the people who love and care for them helps reinforce students’ sense of belonging and security.
  • An increasing number of families do not live together. Family units extend to aunts, uncles, grandparents and communities of friends. Teachers are often challenged by the lack of resources to
    represent the diverse backgrounds of students in their classrooms. The following activities draw on the lives of the students in our classrooms, acknowledging and including all the ways that students are growing up.

Procedure

  • Introduce the game Simon Says.
  • This is a game that creates an awareness of the similarities and differences between students.
  • Procedure of game:
    – Ask everyone to stand. Say to the students: Simon says if you …
    – have a dog as a pet, put a hand on your head
    – have a cat as a pet, touch your nose– have a sister, hop on one leg
    – have two kids living at your house, take two steps forward
    – walk to school, jump up and down
    – come to school by car, sit down
    – travel to school by bus, wave an arm in the air
    – share a bedroom with someone, turn in a circle
    – have a baby living with you, cover your ears and so on.
    – Point out ways in which the students are the same and ways in which they are different.
  • Tell students that you are now going to make a chart called, Family Circles – the people in my family.
  • Create your own felt, paper or magazine cut-outs so that students can assemble any number of children,
    adults and pets to depict their family. Option to use example images provided within this activity.
  • Create your own family first so they can see what to do. Explain who each person is and your relationship.
    Include pets and non-blood related people if appropriate to demonstrate people don’t need to be born into
    a family to be considered part of one.
  • Give students time to think about who they would like to include. Remind students that family members
    may not live under the one roof. This can be for reasons such as sheer size (cousins, aunties and so on) or
    immigration or divorce. A family is not defined by a single address. A family constitutes qualities such as care,
    love and looking after one another.
  • Students can assemble their family and stick it onto paper to be displayed.
  • Some students will want to include family members who don’t live with them but are spread across the
    country or the world. Pin up a world map and connect theses family members to where they live by using
    coloured wool from the family picture to the map.
  • Ask the students to tell their family story to the class. Alternatively, they can work in pairs. Ask them to:
    – name the figures and describe their relationship
    – talk about things they like to do together, such as family gatherings and celebrations.
  • End the session by confirming for students that families are about care, connection, identity and belonging.

Questioning

  1. Do families all look the same?
  2. What can be different about families? (number, gender, roles, ages, abilities, generations)
  3. What things/features do most families share?
  4. Do you have to be born into a family or live in the same house/flat to be in a family?

Curriculum Information