Who Lives in This House? — Building Many Kinds of Families

Using toy figures and shoebox or block “houses”, the child builds a whole street of families — each one put together differently — and discovers what every one of them has in common.

  1. Gather a mixed pile of small figures (play people, animals, pegs with drawn faces — anything) and make 4–5 houses from shoeboxes, block outlines or sheets of paper.
  2. Build your own household first: “Who lives in our house?” Put those figures in house number one.
  3. Now fill the other houses, one at a time, with different families. Start with real ones the child knows: “Who lives at Grandma’s? At Olek’s? Who lives in two houses?” Then add others — one parent, two mums or two dads, grandparents raising children, a big family with cousins, a foster or adoptive family, a couple with no children and a dog.
  4. For each house ask: “Who takes care of whom here? What do you think they like doing together?”
  5. Line the houses up and ask the key question: “What is different about these families? What is the same in every single one?” Help the child land on: people who love and look after each other.
  6. Let the child make up one more family of their own and introduce it.

Variation: Draw the street instead, or read a book such as Todd Parr’s The Family Book and build each family from its pages as you go.

Requirements

  • Space: A patch of floor or a table
  • Surface: Any flat surface
  • Materials: Small figures or pegs, shoeboxes, blocks or paper for houses, optional crayons and a picture book about families
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child; siblings can each build a house
  • Supervision: Light — adult joins in and asks the questions

Rationale & Objective

Family is the first social group a child belongs to, and by 5 children are busy comparing their own with everyone else’s. Anti-Bias Education treats family structure as a core topic because a child who never sees a family like theirs — or like their friend’s — named as ordinary learns that it is somehow wrong. Giving every family the same kind of house and the same warm questions defines family by what it does (love, care, belonging) rather than by who is in it. That definition matches the evidence: the American Academy of Pediatrics concludes that children’s well-being depends far more on their relationships with their parents and on the parents’ sense of competence and security than on the parents’ gender or sexual orientation, and it notes that children are raised well by couples, single parents, grandparents and guardians alike. The activity maps directly onto the subdomain’s measurement demonstrates awareness that families have different structures/traditions, onto the EYFS goal of noticing similarities and differences between people and communities, and onto Te Whāriki’s Belonging and Contribution strands, in which each child and their family are affirmed.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: builds every house like their own; says a family “has to have” a mum and a dad, or is puzzled by other set-ups
  • Developing: can describe two or three real families that differ from their own; asks curious questions (“where is his dad?”)
  • Proficient: builds varied families unprompted and says what they all share; talks about a friend’s family matter-of-factly and kindly
  • Advanced: speaks up when someone says a family is “not a real family”; notices which kinds of families are missing from their books and adds them in play

Safety Notes

  • Small figures and pegs are a choking hazard for younger siblings
  • Follow the child’s lead if the game touches something tender in your own family — separation, a parent who has died or is absent, adoption, fostering. Name it simply and truthfully; do not push for more than the child offers
  • Describe other real families respectfully and do not share private details about them
  • Avoid “normal family” and “broken family”; say “a family with one parent”, “a family with two homes”
  • If the child shows persistent distress or worry about their own family situation, talk it over with your pediatrician or a child psychologist

Hints

  • Playfulness: give every house a doorbell sound and a visiting postman who knocks and asks “who lives here, please?”
  • Sustain interest: keep the street in a box and add a new house whenever the child meets a new family; let the families visit one another for a party
  • Common mistake: presenting your own set-up as the standard and the rest as exceptions. Give each house equal time and the same questions
  • Limited space: draw houses on one sheet of paper and use buttons or coins as people; or play it aloud on a walk, guessing who might live behind each door
  • Cross-domain: count and compare — which house has the most people, how many altogether (math); vocabulary for relatives such as aunt, cousin, stepbrother (language); block building (construction)
  • Progression: own household → families the child knows → families from books → what stays the same in all of them → families with different homes, languages or traditions → what to say if someone teases a child about their family

Sources

  • Derman-Sparks, L. & Edwards, J.O. (2010; 2nd ed. 2020 with C.M. Goins), Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, NAEYC — learning about family structures and fairness
  • American Academy of Pediatrics (2013), “Promoting the Well-Being of Children Whose Parents Are Gay or Lesbian” — policy statement and technical report, Pediatrics
  • Te Whāriki (New Zealand early childhood curriculum, 2017) — Belonging and Contribution strands
  • UK EYFS — Understanding the World (People, Culture and Communities) early learning goal
  • EYLF (Australia) Outcomes 1 and 2 — strong sense of identity; responding to diversity with respect
  • Parr, T. (2003), The Family Book — picture book