It is normal to want to share your favorite hobby with the people that you love. Children really do look up to their parents and grandparents, and can easily become inspired to try doing the activities that they see you doing. In this situation, a genealogist may need some easily downloadable family tree templates that are designed for children to use.
Small children can quickly become enamored with some aspects of genealogy. Kids respond really well to storytelling. Where a genealogist sees a box of old family photos that need to be archived, copied, and properly identified, children see a box of stories, waiting to be told. Who is the person in that photo? How does that person relate to the child? Kids want to find out the answers to these questions, and to a lot more. They want to know the stories about people’s lives.
Many children will find a family tree to be an interesting thing to look at. Children tend to respond well to concepts that can be expressed in a visual way, especially if the child has not yet learned how to read. This means that if you have put together a family tree, your child or grandchild might want to make one, too.
The best way to do this is to locate a simplified, “child friendly” template that you can download and print out. This way, if the child makes a mistake on his or her family tree, you can easily print out a new one. There are several family tree templates that can be found online that will appeal to children.
Disney has three different family tree templates that are based on The Tigger Movie. Each one is in full color, and has small, blank, boxes that a child can write the name of a family member into. One template shows a tree, covered in snow, at night. Another has a tree filled with Tiggers. The third looks like a wall filled with framed photos of Owl’s family. All the charts start with “ME”, and include room for up to four siblings, the child’s parents, and the child’s grandparents on both sides.
There is a very simple template of a family tree that uses cartoon pictures of teddy bears. At the top of the chart, sits a teddy bear that says “ME”. The next row is where the child can place the names of his or her parents. There following row is for the child’s grandparents, on both his mother’s and father’s side of the family. Under that are eight teddy bears representing the child’s great-grandparents.
If you are looking for something a bit more complex, perhaps for an older child to use, then you may want to try the scissor crafts website. Each person in the family tree is represented by a blank shape of a person. Some are boys, and some are girls, and each has the place for a name to be written onto them. You can download a family tree designed for a girl, or for a boy. Or, you can download the extra people shapes, and let you child completely customize their very own family tree.
Image by Nils Geylen on Flickr