Skip to main content

Family Story Backpacks

Family Story Backpacks

Family Story Backpacks are a transportable curriculum designed to facilitate the sharing of stories around themes significant to families in order to invite those stories into classrooms. Families are encouraged to share stories from their life experiences and to view their funds of knowledge as significant to their child and school. The backpacks facilitate partnerships between families and school and create excitement for children about sharing their families with their classmates.

Description of Family Story Backpacks

  • Transportable curriculum to encourage families to share stories around themes significant in their lives.
  • 4-6 children check out a backpack each week on a rotating basis to share with their families at home.
  • Each backpack contains 3 books (1 nonfiction global book and 2 fiction books), 1 artifact, and a family journal. The purpose of the artifact is to encourage the family to share oral stories around the theme.
  • The journal can take two forms. Each family can have their own journal that is moved from backpack to backpack so they can keep adding to the same journal. Another possibility is that each backpack can have a journal that stays with the backpack and each family adds an entry and reads past entries from other families.
  • Entries in journals can be a family story related to the theme, responses to the books, or descriptions of what the family did with the backpack. Any member of the family can add to the journal and the entries can be drawings, writing, photos, etc. Families can make multiple entries related to each backpack.
  • A digital recorder to record the family’s stories can be included in the backpack.
  • The child should have a chance to share briefly about the family’s interactions around the backpack with the teacher or the class when the backpack is returned.

Examples of Family Story Backpacks

The backpacks listed here were created for cultural communities in Tucson, Ariz., and you will want to substitute books that fit your context. You also want to consider the themes that are significant to your students. Our backpack on rain is important because we have so little rain in the desert and the August monsoons are a major time of celebration—that would not be true for a rainy climate.

Time for Bed

  • Henderson, Kathy. Hush, Baby, Hush! Lullabies around the World – Global
  • Fox, Mem. A Bedtime Story – Australia
  • Braun, Sebastien. Back to Bed, Ed! – United Kingdom
  • Artifact: Lullaby gloworm

Let’s Play

Celebrating Birthdays

Grandparents are the Best

  • Stewart Konrad, Marla. Grand – Global
  • Brammer, Ethriam. My Tata’s Guitar/La guitarra de mi tata – Mexican
  • Smalls, Irene. My Nana and Me – African American
  • Artifact: Photo album (add several photos of grandparents with an invitation for the family to draw a picture or add a photo of their grandparents)

Families Have Many Cultures

Rainy Days

  • Cotton, Cynthia. Rain Play – US
  • Germein, Katrina. Big Rain Coming – Australia
  • Ward, Jennifer. The Sunhat – Southwest desert, US
  • Artifact: Small plastic play umbrella

Together as a Family

The Story of My Name

School Days

  • Jackson, Ellen. It’s Back to School We Go OR School in Many Cultures, Heather Adamson – global
  • Forward, Toby, What Did You Do Today? – UK
  • Ancona, George. Mi Escuela/My School – Bilingual, US
  • Artifact: Small white board and markers

Wiggly-Wobbly Teeth

*This engagement was created by Maria Acevedo and Kathy Short.