From site member echaos5:
I’m hoping everyone can help me out.
I will be doing a presentation at Liam’s school about adoption for all the teachers and any interested parents. I want to do 3-4 bristol boards, one for each type of school project. One side would be the “typical” project surrounded by statements from adoptees about why they can’t do the assignment as presented, how it makes them feel etc.. Then the other side would have alternative ideas for how the project can be done that would be inclusive of everyone without having to single out just the adoptees.
The assignments I’m thinking of doing are:
1) Family Trees
2) Birth Information – location, weight, length etc.
3) Time line of your life
4) Family genetics
5) Bring in a baby pictureSo I’m looking for statements to use and suggestions on alternatives. Shout them out!
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I’ll share with you what our daughter’s 1st grade teacher used for their family tree assignment last year. It was a tree on a piece of printer paper – basically a 1st grader’s version of a big ol’ lollipop tree. The instructions were to either draw or paste pictures of everyone in the child’s family; whoever they wanted to include.
Our class had a number of challenges; in addition to our daughter, there was a girl who was being raised by her aunt and partner/foster parents, quite a few children who were living with step parents, and one who is in the process of being adopted by his grandparents. Her teacher is the child of an adoptee, and was remarkably sensitive about the whole thing. The kids had the option of sharing or not with the rest of the class. Our daughter chose to share, and apparently got a better than expected reception from her classmates.
Her family tree consisted of (in her words) “my mom’s side, my dad’s side, and my side of our family.” She included pictures of her first mom and grandparents (first mom’s parents). Other kids obviously did different things. I especially liked the idea of not making the kids share if they weren’t comfortable doing so. Good luck.
Wow! What a privledge for you to be able to share this with the teachers.
I like the comment made already about just a tree and attaching pictures as one way to do the tree.
I just did my daughter’s for her baby book and made it a typical tree but added roots which represent her birth family.
I have also seen a circle family tree. Center is the child. Next ring is in 4 sections for adoptive and birth parents and it goes out from there.
Some things they are missing: Family names & heritage. Birth siblings.
There is an article in the current Adoptive Families magazine about school and adoption. You might check that to see if you can get any aditional ideas. Here is the link; http://view.exacttarget.com/?j=fe611671766c067c711d&m=feef16767c6c03&ls=fded12777063027c7414787c&l=fec11375776c027f&s=fdf515747367007d731c7570&jb=ffcf14&ju=fe251674716c0d7b7d1471 . Hope that works.
You may already know this, but Adoptive Families magazine has a great deal of information about these projects. http://adoptivefamilies.com/
My son’s only in preschool, so I haven’t had to worry about this yet.
Good luck!