The Great Family Expedition: A Lesson for Lottie

Materials Needed:

• For Research: A notebook and pen/pencil, access to family members for interviews (in person, on the phone, or video call), any available family photos or documents.
• For Geography: A large world map or access to an online tool like Google Earth. Push pins or colored sticker dots.
• For Art: A large piece of black or dark blue poster board, markers (metallic silver and gold work well), colored pencils, chalk or pastels, glue, and scissors. Optional: old magazines for collage, glitter, photos to print and cut out.
• For Science:
  • 1 strawberry (fresh or frozen and thawed)
  • 1 small, sealable plastic bag (like a Ziploc bag)
  • 1/2 cup of water
  • 2 teaspoons of dish soap
  • 1/4 teaspoon of salt
  • A coffee filter or cheesecloth
  • A tall, narrow glass or clear jar
  • 1/2 cup of cold rubbing alcohol (place it in the freezer for 30 minutes before you start)

Lesson Plan & Activities

Part 1: The Historian - Become a Family Detective (60-90 minutes)

Goal: To gather the stories and facts that are the building blocks of your family history.

1. Prepare Your Case File: In your notebook, write down everything you already know about your family. Start with yourself, your parents, and your siblings. Then, add grandparents. Do you know their names? Where they were born?
2. Become an Interviewer: Your mission is to interview at least two older relatives (grandparents, great-aunts or uncles are fantastic sources!). Your goal is to learn names, approximate birth years, and birth locations for at least three generations (your grandparents, your great-grandparents, and your great-great-grandparents, if possible).
   Sample Interview Questions:
   • "Can you tell me your parents' full names and your grandparents' full names?"
   • "Where were you born? Where were your parents born?"
   • "What is one of your favorite memories from when you were my age?"
   • "What jobs did people in our family have?"
   • "Are there any special stories about how our family came to live where we do now?"
3. Collect Evidence: Take careful notes in your notebook. Think of yourself as a reporter documenting a very important story. If they have photos, ask if you can take a picture of the photo with a phone!

Part 2: The Geographer - Map Your Family's Journey (30 minutes)

Goal: To see your family's history as a global journey.

1. Lay Out Your Map: Spread out your world map or open Google Earth.
2. Plot the Points: Using your interview notes, find the birth locations of each family member you documented. Place a colored push pin or sticker dot on each location. Use a different color for each branch of the family (e.g., blue for your mom's side, green for your dad's side).
3. Connect the Dots: Draw or imagine the lines that show how your family migrated from one place to another, eventually leading to where you live now. Notice how far your family has traveled! Are there any patterns? Did they cross oceans or mountains?

Part 3: The Scientist - Uncover the Code of Life (30 minutes)

Goal: To understand how traits are passed down through generations using a hands-on experiment.

Introduction: Every person on your map passed down a secret code to the next generation. This code, called DNA, holds the instructions for things like eye color, hair color, and even whether your earlobes are attached or detached! It's wound up tightly inside every cell. We can't see human DNA easily, but we can pull out the DNA from a strawberry to see what it looks like.

1. Make the Extraction Liquid: In a glass, stir together the 1/2 cup of water, 2 teaspoons of dish soap, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. The soap helps break open the cells, and the salt helps the DNA stick together.
2. Mush the Fruit: Put the strawberry in the plastic Ziploc bag, seal it, and gently mush it with your fingers for about 2 minutes. You want to completely smash it into a pulp. This breaks the cell walls.
3. Combine and Filter: Add 2 teaspoons of your extraction liquid into the bag with the strawberry pulp. Seal it and gently mix it around for another minute. Place the coffee filter over the top of your tall, narrow glass, creating a small cone. Pour the strawberry mixture into the filter and let the liquid drip through. Be patient!
4. The Big Reveal: Once you have a good amount of filtered strawberry liquid, carefully remove the filter. Get the cold rubbing alcohol from the freezer. Tilt your glass and slowly pour the cold rubbing alcohol down the side of the glass so it forms a layer on top of the strawberry liquid. Do not stir!
5. Observe: Watch closely! After about a minute, you will see cloudy, stringy, white stuff forming in the alcohol layer. That is the strawberry's DNA! It's the instruction manual for a strawberry. You have a similar, but much more complex, instruction manual inside you from your family.

Part 4: The Artist - Create Your Family Constellation (60-90 minutes)

Goal: To combine all your research into a beautiful, unique piece of art that tells your family's story.

Forget a normal, boring tree! Your family is a universe of stars. You are the star at the center.

1. Design Your Universe: On your black poster board, use chalk or a white pencil to plan your constellation. Put your name in the middle. Branching out from you will be your parents, and from them, your grandparents, and so on. Instead of branches, you'll draw lines connecting "stars."
2. Create Your Stars: Each person is a star. You can draw them with metallic markers, cut them out of shiny paper, or even use photos. You could make the stars bigger for the people you have more stories about.
3. Add Historic Details: Next to each star (person), write their name and where they were born. You can draw a tiny symbol that represents them—a musical note for a musician, a tiny boat if they crossed the ocean, or a book if they were a teacher.
4. Show the Journey: Use dotted or solid lines to connect the stars, just like a real constellation map. You can make the lines the same colors you used on your geography map to show the different family branches.
5. Decorate!: Fill the empty space with smaller stars, planets, and swirling galaxies using pastels, glitter, or markers. This is YOUR family universe, so make it look magical!

Lesson Wrap-Up & Reflection

Show and Tell: Present your Family Constellation. Tell the story of your family's journey, pointing out the people on your map and the places they came from. Explain how the "goo" from the strawberry science experiment represents the invisible family connections that make you, you!

Thinking Deeper (Discussion Questions):

• What was the most surprising story you heard during your interviews?
• Looking at your map, what part of the world do you feel more connected to now?
• If you could add one more "star" to your constellation from history, who would you add and why?

For the Teacher: Differentiation & Extension

• For Support: Focus on just three generations (Lottie, parents, grandparents). Pre-make the DNA extraction liquid to simplify the science portion.
• For a Challenge: Encourage Lottie to research the historical context. If a great-grandparent was born in 1920, what was happening in the world at that time? She could add small "historical event" markers to her constellation timeline. She could also write a short biography of the most interesting ancestor she discovered.