Family Puppets: A Quiz Game

One of the hardest parts of raising your kids abroad is missing out on family time at home. And your children knowing their family. Anyone will tell you this. Since infancy Charlotte's been obsessed with looking at pictures of our family. We've spent hours scrolling through pictures of great-grandparents, grandparents, aunties, auntie's husbands, auntie's significant others, etc. She quizzes us on their names, she quizzes herself on their names, and she quizzes Ani who doesn't usually do so well...

We thought about making one of these books for her, but found an easier and more Congo-friendly way of doing it ourselves. So this Thanksgiving instead of spending time with our family, we put them on popsicle sticks.

Here are our step-by-step instructions for your own long distance popsicle family:

Step 1: Find photos of each family member square-on. This is more difficult than one would think. (Gram, Grammy, Uncle Ryan, please send properly-positioned photo.)

Step 2: Print. Do you see how excited she is already? I wasn't exaggerating about the family photo obsession.

Step 3: Cut. And line-up and count over and over if you are two years-old.

Step 4: Laminate. (Everyone has a personal laminator, right?)

Step 5: Cut out and tape to popsicle sticks.

Step 6: Line-up over and over and over again. Adam tried to teach her how to position everyone in a family tree or even a vertical line. This wasn't as popular as the horizontal line. Seriously, this was the rest of our weekend right here.

 

Step 7: Quiz yourself and random passersby on the names of your family members. For example, from the Mamas to the Papa who fixed our air conditioner everyone now knows even le petit ami de Annika, Luke.