My Incredible Family

Created by Elana Himmelfarb, 2016

Applies to:  Relationships, Self-Awareness, Creative Expression, Critical Thinking, Social Awareness

Objectives:

• To explore and identify family member personalities and strengths.
• Increase awareness and understanding of family members (personalities, roles, relationships, similarities/differences)
• Vocabulary – building and applying descriptive language
• Higher Order Thinking – identifying meaning, making comparisons, categorization, analysis, parts-to-whole thinking, drawing conclusions
• Visualizing and Verbalizing – using images to display meaning, verbalizing thoughts and opinions
• Creativity – creating visual representations from ideas
• Self-reflection and reflecting on others
• Following directions and guidelines
• Self-management – maintaining regulation, sustaining participation and engagement

Materials needed:

• Large poster board for each participant
• if available, picture of each family member/pet
• Markers, scissors
• Computer and printer, internet access to watch The Incredibles dinner scene movie clip.
• Flat surface - table or floor space
• Word bank of descriptive terms & family roles (if difficulty generating words)

Activity Steps

1. Set climate and establish goal: Everyone’s family is incredible. How is your family incredible?
2. Watch dinner scene from “The Incredibles.”
3. Title poster board “My Incredible Family”
4. Identify all the members in immediate family (self, parents, siblings, pet)
5. Paste picture (if available) and name of each family member on poster board - leave ample space between and below each one
6. Family Member Personalities, including self: Identify three to five descriptive words that fit each family members personality. Write words under person’s name
7. Favorite things: List two or three favorite things of each member
8. Family Member strengths: Identify two or three things the family member does really well (cook, fix things, make me laugh, etc.)
9. Using ideas generated by steps 6, 7 & 8 assign a super power to each family member (example: Dad: Captain Repair; Mom: The Clean Machine; Brother: Superclown; Dog: Captain destroyer, Cat: SnuggleCat,
10. Using key words on Google Images, find an image that represents each family member, (including themselves). Copy, cut and paste onto board.

Tips & Discussion Points:

After movie clip: identify descriptive words for each character in the clip, identify one to two things they are good at. Clarify that although real families do not have super powers, we all have special powers that make us incredible. (Segue to their own families)

My Incredible Family additional talking points:

• Most Likely To                                       (who in your family is most likely to start a fight, make people laugh, find fun things to do, want to go out to eat, make a mess, etc.)
• If you could assign super powers to each member of the family what would they be?
• If you were a super hero, what would your costume look like?
• What are family members NOT good at?
• What traits, skills or family roles do I share with other family members? Who am I alike and in what ways, who am I different from and in what ways

Carrying the concept forward

 After exercise, if there is enthusiasm, make a movie night of “The Incredibles” to watch in feature length, Have participant posters on display during film, After the film ask if any of their family members are like any of the characters on the film in any way.