A Family Tree With Your Kids: A Weekend Project

The setup

Butcher paper or a long roll from the craft store. Sharpies. Photos from a shoebox. Snacks. That's the whole kit.

The flow

Start with the child at the centre, not the oldest ancestor at the top. Kids engage more when they're the story's subject. Draw branches out to parents, then grandparents, as far as they know. Let them guess middle names. Write the guess down, then cross it out when the real one comes back from a phone call to Grandma.

What they remember

Ask them a year later what they learned. The answer is almost never dates. It's "Great-grandpa's nickname was 'Boots'" or "Aunt Mary ran a bakery during the war." Stories beat facts when you're nine.