It's time for another hands-on activity to help young children learn about family members! Most kids LOVE their grandparents, but I wanted to come up with an interactive way to help the kids learn more about their grandparents as individuals, and not just the people who act silly with them on holidays and give them presents on birthdays. So, I introduce to you the Grandparent Pyramid.
Here is a list of the materials you'll need in this project:
- Four pieces of corrugated cardboard OR foam-core poster board
- Pencil and ruler for measuring cardboard
- Tape (I used clear packing tape, but any kind should work)
- Sharp scissors or a fabric rotary cutter
- Black marker
- Scrapbook cardstock or construction paper
- Self-adhesive Velcro circular dots
- Glue stick
- Computer with printer and paper
The first thing you will need are the pieces of cardboard or poster board. I had saved some larger pieces from a picture frame shipment that I had received awhile ago. You can also use sides of cardboard boxes or buy some foam core poster board at any craft or office supply store. The size of the pieces is up to you; you will see that my pyramid ends up being rather large, but a smaller size would work great, too.
I cut an equilateral (equal-length sides) triangle from each piece of cardboard using a yardstick, pencil, and rotary cutter. If your child wants to help you measure, that's great, but just make sure the adult does the cutting.
Here is a list of the materials you'll need in this project:
- Four pieces of corrugated cardboard OR foam-core poster board
- Pencil and ruler for measuring cardboard
- Tape (I used clear packing tape, but any kind should work)
- Sharp scissors or a fabric rotary cutter
- Black marker
- Scrapbook cardstock or construction paper
- Self-adhesive Velcro circular dots
- Glue stick
- Computer with printer and paper
The first thing you will need are the pieces of cardboard or poster board. I had saved some larger pieces from a picture frame shipment that I had received awhile ago. You can also use sides of cardboard boxes or buy some foam core poster board at any craft or office supply store. The size of the pieces is up to you; you will see that my pyramid ends up being rather large, but a smaller size would work great, too.
I cut an equilateral (equal-length sides) triangle from each piece of cardboard using a yardstick, pencil, and rotary cutter. If your child wants to help you measure, that's great, but just make sure the adult does the cutting.
Then, I flipped over all the pieces to their back sides and attached them with clear packing tape. Here is what it looked like:
I should mention that, if you like, you can cover your cardboard or foam board pieces in construction paper or even fabric to make it look a little nicer. We just left the cardboard as is. Next, we cut some smaller triangles out of different colored cardstock paper and labeled each side of the pyramid. My children call both sets of grandparents 'Grandma' and 'Grandpa,' but if your kids use different words, like Nana and Papaw, you can use those. DO be sure to include surnames, though!
Now, when you stand it up, and tape the two ends together, you have a free-standing cardboard pyramid!
Next, we went to our desktop computer that is hooked up to our printer. We needed photos of each grandparent, so we printed out those. Then, we talked about what each grandparent likes to do for fun, what they do for a living (or what they did, if they are retired), and where they live. I even asked the kids if they knew their grandparents' first names, which, a bit to my surprise, they did. We searched for clip art images on Google that told a simple story of each grandparent and printed them out. We found images corresponding to jobs, hobbies, favorite foods, and even map images to help represent where they live. I also printed out their first names, and the grandmothers' maiden names. Please be sure to include any grandparents who may no longer be living; this is a great time to teach the child a little bit about the characteristics of that person.
For the next step, you'll need these self-adhesive Velcro dots, which I used previously in my Rainbow Fan Chart activity.
For the next step, you'll need these self-adhesive Velcro dots, which I used previously in my Rainbow Fan Chart activity.
After you cut out all of your clip art images, put a Velcro dot on the back of the picture and the corresponding Velcro dot on the pyramid. Because we printed out our images on normal computer paper, we glued them to scrapbook cardstock to make them a bit more durable. We color-coded the images with each grandparent's name plate, but you don't have to do it this way. If you would like to make this activity more of a game, I would recommend using all one color to back the images, so the color wouldn't 'give away' who each image corresponded to. We put each grandparent's photo at the top of each triangle, but arranged the other dots randomly.
And the next step is to let the kids go to town sticking and re-sticking the words and images all over the pyramid!
A lot of children these days have more than four grandparents in their lives, and, to them, the non-blood grandparents are just as, or even more, important to them than the blood grandparents. Well, did you know you can make a pyramid with any number of sides to correspond to your child's number of grandparents? I made a couple of mini-pyramids to demonstrate. The one on the left has five sides and the one on the right has six sides. The more sides you make, the less surface area you will have for each grandparent, but you can just make the clip art images and words smaller to compensate. (In fact, you could use this project idea to learn about aunts/uncles, siblings, and/or cousins, too!)
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Extension: Have the kids ask their grandparents for more information that they can add to the pyramid. What are their favorite colors, foods, TV shows, sports, holidays, and weather or seasons? This is such a great way to get even the youngest family members interested in interviewing elder family members, which is such an important part of family history research and documentation.
What do you think? Do you know any children that would enjoy doing something like this? Let me know if you do try this with any kids in your life and I'd love to see pics!
©2014, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder.
What do you think? Do you know any children that would enjoy doing something like this? Let me know if you do try this with any kids in your life and I'd love to see pics!
©2014, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder.
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