Play With Me: Family [Part 3]

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

This week of Play With Me: Ages 6-9 continues 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.

Activity: Where did I grow up?

In this activity you and your child will both create maps with the important things in your life like your house, school and work. You can also include whatever else is important to you. Use the printout sheets as a starting point for your maps. Draw in as much detail as you like; you can also cut pictures from magazines etc. if you feel for instance you cannot draw your beloved pet that you had growing up. Your map will be a vehicle for you and your child to learn about each other.

Supplies/Setup

• Printouts of House Sheet, School & Store Sheet, Work Sheet, Home & School Map, Work & Store map
• Scissors
• Glue
• Crayons or Markers

Once you have printed your sheets cut out the pictures that look most like where you lived, went to school and worked. Glue them to the printouts of the maps. Color them in and answer the questions on the sheets. Talk with your child about each of your answers as you fill them in, tell them the name of your school, the color of your house etc.. Add in details like a river or farm, whatever you had near you growing up. Your child should make their own map and can fill in where they live, go to school and would like to work when they get older. Be sure to show each other your finished maps.

These are the questions on each Map sheet:

Home and School Map

• My address was:
  
• My house was what color?
• I lived there for # of years:
• My neighbors were:

• The name of my school was:
• I went there for # of years:
• My school was BIG or SMALL:
• My Friends were:

Work and Store Map

• I worked at:
• I worked there for # of years:
• I was a:

• I could WALK or DRIVE to stores:
• My stores were BIG or SMALL:
• My stores were NEAR or FAR from my house:

When you are done you may also want to mail your sheets to each other in the "snail mail". Not only will it be exciting for your child to send/receive something in the mail once it arrives you can have a follow up conversation about them. You can ask your child questions like "I see you drew a truck in the school you want to go to; why is it there? They might notice things in your map that they want to ask you about like "Why did you paste all of the trees close to your house; did you live in a forest?"

Next week's Play With Me finishes the "Family" series! We wish you a happy holiday and want you to Stay healthy, Stay strong and Remember to Play More with DPR!