Family Relationships: Riddles

A starred portrait of a boy named Tom sits at the top left of this 2nd grade page, beside a word box holding four family words: grandpa, uncle, grandma and aunt. Below are eight numbered riddles, each one sentence ending in a blank, such as Tom's dad's mom is Tom's ... and Tom's mom's brother is Tom's .... The child writes the right family word on each line. The instruction says outright that one word can fit more than one riddle, and on the sheet shown every word in the box answers exactly two, one from his mom's side and one from his dad's.

The riddles ask children to put two relationships together into one, which is the thinking behind reading any family tree: a mom's mom is a grandma, a dad's sister is an aunt. Both sides of the family appear, so the child meets the fact that Tom has two grandmas and that the word does not change with the side. Every word in the box is an answer, so the challenge is not ruling out distractors but seeing that two different paths lead to the same word; a child who looks for eight different answers will stop and ask.

One sheet, eight riddles, eight words. There is no tree to lean on, so draw one on the board for children who need it and let them point along the lines. Second graders enjoy writing a riddle of their own in the same pattern for a classmate to solve. This page builds on the clues face, which solved the same kind of relationship with pictures, and the family tree template is a good way to finish the unit.