1st Social Studies Project: Family Tree (Part 1)

Little Boy is currently enjoying his lull period, having submitted the last of his Social Studies project on Monday.  This Social Studies project which took him two solid months to complete was his 1st major project.  

There are three parts to the project.  First, he had to create a 2D family tree (up to three generations), detailing every family member's name, date of birth and his/her rank (in Mandarin) within the family.  Thanks to WhatsApp, getting the various dates of birth was a piece of cake.  But, we struggled with the ranks. As Little Boy addresses all my husband's brothers, my brothers and their wives simply as Uncle and Auntie so and so, we were clueless how to address them properly, according to their ranks, in Mandarin.  In the end, I had to enlist the help of a Mandarin-speaking friend to differentiate between 舅舅 and 叔叔 and also to learn the various addresses for their respective wives.  I was secretly thankful that both my husband and I don't have any sisters as that would further confuse Little Boy's already puzzled mind (till date, he still prefers to address his relatives as Uncle and Auntie so and so) :)  

Once we had had all the information, we went on to discuss how best to present the family tree.  I challenged Little Boy's original idea of using apples to represent the family members as I thought that was too common and lacked creativity.  After much brainstorming, he agreed to use owls.  Superimposing the pictures and typing the information onto the owls' bodies proved to be tedious but I got Little Boy to do a few each time, whenever he had the time.  He was not conscientious on this task and I would have to nag at him numerous times before he actually did some work.  It was pure torture!  It took him weeks to complete all the owls.

Thankfully, I didn't have much trouble getting Little Boy to do up the tree and stick the owls on the corrugated board.  Having experienced the repercussions of his procrastination on other projects (see my previous post), he obliged readily when I asked him to start on the tree during one of the Chinese New Year holidays.  Though he did groaned and complained a little when he grew tired of sticking the many leaves to make a tree collage, he persevered and managed to complete the whole tree in about two hours.  I was so happy to see this change of attitude and the virtue of hard work he displayed (even if it's just for this short while).

Patiently making a tree collage

When the whole tree was completed, Little Boy couldn't stop marvelling at his own work.  'Mom, I couldn't believe I made this.  It is fantastic!' he exclaimed, feeling extremely pleased with himself.  

It was fantastic because he put his heart and mind into doing it.  It was fantastic because he took up the challenge and tried something he had not done before.  It was fantastic because he persevered despite the hard work.  It was fantastic because he made it fantastic! And I am so very proud of him.

The completed family tree.