Play With Me: Family [Part 1]

By: Shannon Mallery, Program Assistant Sr. - Mature Adults

This week of Play With Me: Ages 6-9 starts the Family series. The Play With Me: Family activities will help you and your child get to know each other and your family better.

Play With Me is a series of interactive and meaningful activities that you can do over technology with the children in your life. Before getting started, adult assistance will be needed to help collect and setup supplies for the children. Consider sending the supply list ahead of time so the adult can prepare in advance.

This week we will be making a family crest and getting to know more about your family.

Supplies/Setup

• Print out of the Family Crest
• Markers, crayons or colored pencils
• Scissors
• Glue

This time of year brings to mind family, and although you may not be able to be in person with your little one this year, you may have the opportunity to spend some one on one time with them. You can use this time to not only discover more about each other but also your family. There are most likely some personal achievements and memorable times celebrated by your little one that they know of. But there are many that took place for family members before they were born that they may not know about. They might not know that their mother won the science fair or that their uncle ran track. They may not know that the family visited Niagara Falls many decades ago. Knowing these sorts of things will give your little one a more personal view into their own family. It will help them connect to their relatives. They will come to better understand what makes their family unique. One way you can talk together with your child about this is to have them Guess who?

• 
  Guess who got gum in their hair and had to have it cut out?
• Guess who learned to tie their shoes on top of a mountain?
• Guess who moved our family here from California and why they did that?
• Guess who taught math at the high school for 30 years?

The Guess who questions you ask should be a mixture of funny things, relatable things and things that you want your child to know about your family. Things that define who you all are.

Once you have discussed your family history in this way you are ready to make your family crest. Each of you should have your own printout and supplies. Use them to make your family crest. Decide together what things you think best represent your family. Come up with a symbol for each, make sure the symbol is easy enough for children to draw. Use the print out of the crest to draw these symbols in to, to make your own family crest that represents who your family is and what is important to you. Above is an example of a DPR family crest that may inspire you.