Rings of Me — From My Home to My Town

A cut-and-stack craft where the child builds a set of ever-bigger paper circles showing the groups and places they are part of — me, my family, my class, my street, my town.

  1. Cut 4–5 paper circles in growing sizes (trace a cup, a bowl, a plate, a big pot lid). Use a different colour for each if you can.
  2. Start with the smallest: the child draws themselves and you write their name. Say, “This is you. Now — who are you part of?”
  3. On the next circle the child draws their family (whoever lives in or belongs to their family, in their own words). On the next, their class or preschool group — the teacher, a few friends, the group’s name.
  4. Keep going outwards with groups that are real for your child: the building or street, a sports or music group, a place of worship, the town, the country.
  5. Stack the circles smallest on top and fasten them with a paper fastener or a staple at the top edge so they flip like a little book.
  6. Flip through together using the same sentence each time: “I am Maya. I am part of the Kowalski family. I am part of the Ladybird group…” Let the child “read” it to someone else in the family.

Variation: use nesting bowls or boxes instead of paper — put a small figure in the tiniest one and name each bigger container as you nest them (“the family bowl goes inside the street bowl…”). Or add a new ring whenever the child joins something new (a swimming class, a new school).

Requirements

  • Space: A table or a patch of floor
  • Surface: Any flat surface suitable for drawing and cutting
  • Materials: Paper (coloured if available), round things to trace, child scissors, crayons or markers, a paper fastener or stapler; photos optional
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child; siblings can each make their own
  • Supervision: Moderate — adult helps with cutting the larger circles, writing labels, and the conversation

Rationale & Objective

Five-year-olds are just beginning to understand that one person can belong to several groups at once and that groups sit inside one another. The Head Start ELOF describes this directly: by 60 months a child “identifies self as being a part of different groups, such as family, community, culture, faith, or preschool.” The EYLF (Outcome 2) and Te Whāriki’s Belonging strand both treat knowing “I have a place here” as a foundation for confident participation, and the Polish core curriculum expects children to feel and explain their belonging to family, preschool group, and nation. Making the memberships concrete and visible — one ring per group, each holding the smaller ones — gives a child words and a picture for an idea that is otherwise abstract, and it rehearses the first measurement for this subdomain: naming the people in one’s family and group. David Sobel’s work on children’s mapmaking shows that at this age a sense of place grows outward from home, which is exactly the order the rings follow.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: draws self and names family members with prompting; needs the adult to suggest every further group; treats the rings as separate pictures
  • Developing: names family and class/preschool group unaided and adds a detail for each (“that’s my teacher”); follows the “I am part of…” sentence with help
  • Proficient: recites all the rings independently, names several members of each group, and explains that the smaller groups are inside the bigger ones (“my street is in my town”)
  • Advanced: spontaneously suggests new rings (“I’m in the swimming group too!”), notices that other people have different rings, and uses “we” when talking about each group

Safety Notes

  • Use child-safe scissors; an adult should cut thick card and handle the stapler, and paper fasteners are a choking hazard for younger siblings
  • Let the child define their own family — step-parents, grandparents, foster carers, two homes, pets. Do not correct who “counts”
  • If the child has recently moved, changed school, or lost a family member, expect big feelings; follow their lead and keep the old ring if they want it
  • A child who cannot name anyone in their class after several months, or says nobody there likes them, is worth a calm conversation with the teacher

Hints

  • Playfulness: turn the finished stack into a “zoom” game — hold it far away and “zoom in” from the town to the tiny me-circle, then zoom back out with rocket noises
  • Sustain interest: keep the stack on the fridge and add a ring or a new face whenever life changes; revisit it on the first day of a new term or after a house move
  • Common mistake: turning it into a geography lesson with countries and continents. Keep it to groups the child actually experiences — people and places they can picture
  • Limited space: no craft supplies needed — do it with hands: a fist is “me,” the other hand wraps round it for “my family,” a grown-up’s hands wrap round both for “my class”
  • Cross-domain: ordering circles by size is seriation (math); labelling each ring is early writing; the picture book Me on the Map extends it into early geography
  • Progression: me + family only → add class or preschool group → add neighbourhood and clubs → add town and country → the child interviews a parent and makes their rings to compare

Sources

  • Head Start ELOF — Social and Emotional Development, Sense of Identity and Belonging (child has a sense of belonging to family, community, and other groups)
  • EYLF (Belonging, Being & Becoming) — Outcome 2: children are connected with and contribute to their world (a sense of belonging / connectedness to groups and communities)
  • Te Whāriki (2017) — Belonging / Mana whenua strand
  • Polish Podstawa Programowa Wychowania Przedszkolnego (2017) — social area (the child feels and explains belonging to family, preschool group, and nation)
  • Sobel, D. (1998), Mapmaking with Children: Sense of Place Education for the Elementary Years
  • Sweeney, J. (1996), Me on the Map (picture book)