My People Tree — Who I Belong To

The child draws themselves in the middle of a big sheet of paper and surrounds the picture with the people they belong to, adding for each one something they share — a look, a like, a language, a thing they do together. A five-year-old’s sense of “who I am” leans heavily on “whose I am,” and this puts it on paper.

  1. Start with the child. On a large sheet, the child draws themselves in the centre (or sticks on a photo) and writes or copies their name.
  2. Tell the story of their name. Who chose it and why? Does it mean something? Is there a nickname, a name in another language, a relative with the same one? Children are usually gripped by this, and it is theirs alone.
  3. Add the people. “Who are your people?” Let the child decide who goes on — parents, siblings, grandparents, a childminder, a best friend, the dog. Draw a simple face for each and join it to the middle with a line.
  4. Find one thing shared along each line. “What’s the same about you and Babcia?” — “We both have curly hair.” “We both like poppy-seed cake.” “We both speak Polish.” Write a word or draw a tiny picture on the line.
  5. Find one thing that is only theirs. “And what’s something about you that’s just you — nobody else in the family?” Write it next to their own picture: the only left-hander, the only one who likes olives, the family’s best whistler.
  6. Add the wider circles, if the child is still keen — the street or town they live in, their preschool group, the languages spoken at home, a family tradition or festival they love.
  7. Hang it up where the child can see it, and leave a pen nearby for adding people later.

Variation: ring or video-call a grandparent and let the child ask one question about when the grandparent was five — what they played, what they ate, what they were scared of — then add the answer to the tree. Or build the tree outdoors from sticks and stones, one stone per person.

Requirements

  • Space: A table or a clear patch of floor
  • Surface: Flat surface large enough for a big sheet of paper
  • Materials: A large sheet of paper (or several taped together), crayons or markers; optional family photos and glue
  • Participants: 1 child + 1 adult; relatives can join in person or by phone
  • Supervision: Light to moderate — the adult scribes and supplies family stories

Rationale & Objective

Self-concept in early childhood has two halves: I am a unique individual and I belong. The Head Start ELOF pairs them explicitly — the child “recognizes self as a unique individual” and “has sense of belonging to family, community, and other groups” — and the EYLF builds its whole framework on belonging, being, and becoming. The Polish core curriculum likewise expects children leaving preschool to feel and explain their belonging to a family, a nation, and their preschool group. NAEYC’s anti-bias education framework names identity as its first goal: each child demonstrating self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2020). The tree makes these abstract aims concrete. Finding something shared on each line ties the child’s own features and tastes to people they love, so that curly hair or a home language becomes a link rather than a difference; finding something “just mine” protects individuality inside that belonging. The family-stories component has research behind it too: in a study of older children and adolescents, those who knew more about their family’s history showed higher self-esteem and a stronger sense of control over their lives (Duke, Lazarus & Fivush, 2008) — the association is correlational, but it suggests that family stories told early are an investment in a child’s sense of who they are.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: names immediate family members; needs the adult to suggest what is shared; draws people without linking them to themselves
  • Developing: chooses who belongs on the tree with confidence; finds a shared look or like for two or three people (“me and Daddy both like football”); enjoys hearing their name story
  • Proficient: finds something shared with most people and something that is only theirs; retells their name story; talks about their family, home language, or traditions with evident pride
  • Advanced: describes themselves as belonging to several groups at once (family, preschool, street, country); notices without judgment that other families are built differently; asks relatives their own questions and adds to the tree unprompted

Safety Notes

  • Let the child define “my people” — step-parents, foster carers, two homes, a parent who has died, absent relatives, close family friends, and pets may all belong; never correct the tree to match a standard family shape
  • For adopted or fostered children, or where there has been a recent separation or bereavement, this activity can stir up big questions; go at the child’s pace, answer honestly and simply, and stop if they become distressed
  • Keep comparisons kind — “you have Grandpa’s temper” or “you’re the fussy one” stick for years; choose shared traits the child can be glad of
  • If the child says they don’t belong or that nobody is like them, take it seriously as a feeling, add yourself firmly to the tree with something you share, and raise it with a professional if the theme keeps returning
  • Supervise glue, scissors, and small photos around younger siblings

Hints

  • Playfulness: play “Who Am I Like?” in front of a mirror with a relative or their photo — compare eyebrows, ears, thumbs, and laughs; let the child draw everyone with one silly exaggerated feature
  • Sustain interest: treat the tree as unfinished — add a new person, pet, or shared thing after visits, holidays, and family gatherings, and re-tell one family story each time
  • Common mistake: turning it into a genealogy lesson with correct generations and surnames. For a five-year-old the point is the lines — what connects me to each person — not an accurate family tree
  • Limited space: do it without paper on a walk or at bedtime — “Tell me one way you’re like Mama, and one way you’re only you” — or use five fingers of one hand for five people
  • Cross-domain: copying names is early writing; telling the name story and interviewing a grandparent build narrative and questioning skills; sorting “same as me / different from me” is classification; talking about other families builds social understanding
  • Progression: immediate family with adult-suggested links → child finds the shared things themselves → adds “only me” traits → adds wider groups and places → child interviews relatives and tells a family story to someone else

Sources

  • Head Start ELOF — Sense of Identity and Belonging (P-SE 9: recognises self as a unique individual; P-SE 11: has a sense of belonging to family, community, and other groups)
  • Australian EYLF — Belonging, Being and Becoming; Outcome 1: Children have a strong sense of identity
  • Derman-Sparks, L. & Edwards, J. O., with Goins, C. M. (2020). Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves (2nd ed.). NAEYC — Goal 1: Identity
  • Duke, M. P., Lazarus, A. & Fivush, R. (2008). “Knowledge of family history as a clinically useful index of psychological well-being and prognosis: A brief report.” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 45(2), 268–272
  • Polish Podstawa Programowa Wychowania Przedszkolnego (2017) — social area of development (sense of own worth; belonging to family, nation, and preschool group)
  • CASEL — Self-Awareness (integrating personal and social identities; identifying personal, cultural, and linguistic assets)