Ghosts of Our Ancestors

10/29/2014

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that we like to create seasonal and holiday crafts and activities. My kids just love everything about the Halloween season, so I decided to combine a little family history with a simple ghost-making craft.

It's difficult to talk with young children about family ancestors who 1.) they have never met and 2.) are deceased. You can try to sit down with them and just look at an old family photo album, but, trust me, that doesn't hold their attention for very long and it's not really all that fun. So, I thought that a much better approach would be to combine a fun Halloween craft with family photos.

I decided to use a ghost theme, because, when my kids have asked what a ghost is, I have told them that it is a spirit of a person who has passed away. When people die, their bodies stop working, but their spirits live on. It might be an overly-simplified explanation, but it's not scary, and actually helpful in this case when I want to use the idea of ghosts to talk about ancestors. (See this post about how I've used Disney's Mulan to talk with my kids about ancestors.)

Here is a list of the supplies I used for this activity:

- Black construction paper, poster board, or cardstock
- White paint and disposable plate
- Ghost-shaped cookie cutter or stamp
- Digital files of old family photos and a computer printer
- Scissors
- Glue

There is a little bit of adult prep work required for this project. Before I even told my daughter we were going to do a craft, I printed out photo head shots of some of our ancestors. Make sure the images are small enough to fit inside the ghost shape you will be making with the cookie cutter or stamp. Then, I squirted out some white paint onto a disposable plate and spread it around enough that the area was large enough to fit the cookie cutter.

The next step is to let your child make ghost stamps all over the black poster board or paper. If you are not using "washable" paint, you might want to put a tablecloth or drop cloth under the poster board to keep messes contained better. I also helped by holding the poster board in place when she was stamping to avoid smears.

When you are done stamping, you must wait for the paint to dry. To pass the time, I let my four-year-old help me cut out the individual family ancestor photos that I had printed out earlier. (Learning how to use scissors is a major skill that she practices in her preschool class.) I still had to trim the images better after she was done, but it was good practice for her! If your child is not old enough to use scissors, make sure an adult or older child completes this task.

When the paint was dry, I gave my daughter a glue stick and told her she could put one photo in every ghost. As she was choosing photos and gluing, I told her the name of each person and how she was related to them in terms she could understand. For example, instead of saying, "This was your great-great-grandmother," I said, "This was Grandma K.'s grandma."

We did not glue the photos down in any particular order, and we mixed photos from both my and my husband's sides of the family. With an older child, it would be possible to arrange the ghosts and photos in more of a traditional family pedigree format, provided that you have a photo for each person in that family line. You could also use a paint pen to write each ancestor's name below his or her ghost.

In the end, my daughter was very proud of her final poster and she wanted to hang it in the basement. Can't argue with that!