Simple family tree

Do you remember struggling as a kid to work out how all your different family members are related? I recall being in the car on the way to family BBQs and quickly asking my parents to remind me who our cousins are or how a specific person fits into the family. I know my kids find it particularly confusing that my parents don't live together any more and thus struggle to work out how they can both be their grandparents and not be married.

I made a simple family tree to assist my kids to work it all out. I used:

• green and brown cardboard
• photos
• scissors
• glue stick
• black marker pen 

Basically, I just rummaged through a box of old photos and cut out the heads of all our different family members. If I couldn't find photos of certain people, I printed digital images from my computer onto paper using a coloured printer. Either quality looks fine - real photos or printer paper.

I wrote family members' names and their relationship to my children. At this stage I have only included family members that the kids have met such as their aunts, uncles, grandparents, great-granparents and cousins. I have left room at the top of the tree to add on previous generations. However, I think it will be a good start for the kids to first understand how their immediate family members fit into the picture.

Our family tree is stuck on our living room wall and is a constant point of discussion now.