Paper Bag Family Trees

For Social Studies, we have been covering the core standards for history. In an effort to demonstrate chronological thinking about their family history, I had my students make family trees. They researched their family history and wrote down family members for a family tree. We discussed why it is called a family tree and had a few visual examples. Then they created their own family "trees".

For each member of their family, they drew a face on a small round paper and on the back wrote the person's name and relationship such as grandma or uncle. Then my students made the paper bag "trees" and stapled the family members to the "branches". We added leaves to give our "trees" some life.

On the base (and front) of each "tree" is a picture of the student with their parents right below them. Other relatives were on the branches. They turned out great! Tomorrow we are making our "trunk timelines" and I hope to post how we added those to our family "trees".

I have a "forest" of family "trees" in my room. :)