SUBJECT
Food and Cooking, Adoption and Foster Care, Divorce and Remarriage, Families and Social Structures, Understanding Self and Others, Poetry Writing, Extended Family, Parents

GRADE
Pre-K-K

DURATION
4 Weeks

We Are Family

By Steven Hicks

We are all part of a family. Families are configured in different ways with many factors affecting them: divorce, adoption, remarriage, ethnic diversity, grandparents as primary care givers, single parents, foster care, etc. In this unit, students learn that there are different kinds of families and no one structure is better than another. They discover that all types of families love and care for each other.

OBJECTIVE
Students Will:

Discuss their family structures.
Become familiar with the family diversity of their peers and others in the world.
Learn about family habits, history, and values.

LESSONS FOR THIS UNIT
Lesson 1: Family Quilts Keep Us Warm
Lesson 2: Brown Paper Bag Family Memories
Lesson 3: Tracing Our Own Family Pilgrimages

REPRODUCIBLES
Family Quilt Square (PDF)
Brown Paper Bag Family Memories Letter to Families (PDF)
Family Memory Page (PDF)
Class Book Feedback Page (PDF)
Tracing Our Own Family Pilgrimages Family Interview (PDF)
Suitcase (PDF)

CULMINATING ACTIVITY

Kinder-giving Feast
Two weeks before Thanksgiving, I send home a letter telling families about our Kinder-giving Feast and inviting them to share a family favorite dish. I also ask them to share the recipe for our Class Cookbook for the housekeeping center (and for me). On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, our families gather for a feast of family favorites. Children perform a song and poem. This event gives families an opportunity to see all the projects we've been working on this month.

SUPPORTING BOOKS

Books for Teaching about Families

Teacher Store

The Teacher Store

Mountain Pose

When twelve-year-old Ellie inherits an old Vermont farm from her cruel and heartless grandmother Aurelia, she reads a set of diaries written by an ancestor and discovers secrets from the past.

$4.50
Paperback Book | Grades 6-9

Mountain Pose

Grades 6-9 $4.50

Teacher Store

The Teacher Store

Almost Home

After years of being shuffled back and forth between her divorced parents, 12-year-old Leah, now living permanently with her father and stepmother, finds it difficult to adjust to her new situation and the circumstances that made it possible.

$4.95
Paperback Book | Grades 6-9

Almost Home

Grades 6-9 $4.95

ARTICLE	Dad's New Girlfriend How should I go about introducing my 2 year old to my new girlfriend?

LESSON PLAN	Best Part of Me Describes a beginning of the school year lesson in which students identify their favorite parts of themselves through descriptive poetry and...

BOOK INFORMATION	Strays Like Us After a lifetime of following her mother from one faceless city to another, Molly finds herself living with her great-aunt Fay and becoming friends with their next-door neighbor Will, a stray like herself. Soon Molly comes to learn that the world is full of strays, and that some just end up where they belong sooner than others.