Create Your Own “My Family Traditions” Book
Explore family and culture by making a book about your family's activities and traditions. Read the book together to remember special family memories, and add to the book when you start a new tradition.
Elmo loves to spend time with his family. They like to play games, sing songs, bake yummy treats, celebrate holidays, and do crafts together. They have lots of family traditions!
Talk with your child about activities and traditions that you do within your family or culture, such as Sunday Storytime, Taco Tuesdays, or eating Thanksgiving dinner with aunts and uncles. Invite your child to make a family story book about these special things you do as a family. Look through the book often to remember all of the ways your family is unique and special.
Materials
Directions
Collect photos of your family doing these traditions or draw pictures of them. As you find photos or draw pictures, ask your child, “What are your favorite things about this tradition?” Share your own answers to these questions too.
Cut out the pictures for your child and help them tape the pictures onto construction paper.
Have your child tell you about what is going on in each picture. Write down what they say on the construction paper.
Write “My Family Traditions,” on a separate piece of construction paper to make a cover for your family story book. Encourage your child to decorate the cover however they would like. Write “Author:” below the title, and help your child write their name on the cover.
Using a hole puncher, make holes on the left side of the pages and tie pieces of string through them to assemble the pages.
Read your new family traditions book together! Talk with your child about how everyone comes from a different type of family and has different family traditions. Some of your family traditions might be the same or different from friends’ family traditions. Talk about how the different traditions and things people do as a family are part of what makes each family special. Help your child think about how they feel when participating in family traditions.
The next time you’re doing a special thing together as a family, take out your “My Family Traditions” book and ask your child how the special activity makes them feel. Write the feeling word next to the activity and draw a face to represent the feeling.
Photographs by Chelsea Foy.
Emotions & Self-Awareness
Social Skills
Character
- Activity Type
- Craft
- Topics