OK I am planning a lesson for elementary level (ie quite low)

Whats the best game for teaching family words?

by that I mean fun

thanks for the ideas

I sometimes use a short story of my own where family members are monsters and then I use funny pictures. (dad can be Frankenstein etc ) they can also draw such family themselves (depending on age) where I have just a description of the family like : mum has 3 heads and one leg etc.

I normally draw my family on the chalk-board. I can't draw so everyone including myself are these silly looking stick figures...the kids always get a kick out of this. My dad is balding so I draw him with 3 pieces of hair sticking out....etc. I make sure to write all the ages of my family members under each stick figure ( they get a kick out of this b/c my parents are soooo much older than their parents..I'm getting old!). I also pass around a laminated family tree that I made with pictures of my family and I (including my dog and cat since I don't have kids yet). Then I pass out the following hand-out:
http://www.kizclub.com/Topics/myself/myfamily.pdf
I blow this worksheet up and we cut and paste the family names/titles together. I recommend numbering the family names this makes it easier for the kids who have a difficult time reading.
Or you can have the kids draw a stick figure family tree of their own. They love doing this too. I hope this helps! [/img]

Families can be a touchy subject. I have used famous families (Sazae-san, if you live in Japan) or one idea I have yet to use is to get students to create the ideal or fun family. You could create one as a class and then ask students to make their own family tree.
You can ask students for recommendations or supply images or names. This way you can give students the choice to describe both their real family, adding extra members to practice more vocabulary and take the stress off of those would rather not discuss their own families.

Family vocab is one of those units where I just grit my teeth and get to work. I generally cover the vocab and play a game or two to solidify it (concentration, slap, slam, go fish ...)

Then I give them the 'My Family' sheet and have them draw their family members, including themselves, into the house.

Lastly, they explain either to me or to a partner about their picture.
'This is my father.' adv: 'He is 38 years old. He's tall and scary.'
'This is me.' adv: 'I am 7 years old. I'm short and slow.'
...

They keep the sheet and we whip it out for review in the beginning of the next few lessons.

I do have a fun exercise that goes in the family unit. I made some cards (like funwithstories) of Japanese cartoon characters, Doraemon. I got the pictures off the net so I can't post those on the site. However, here's the basic idea. There are several families and relationships between the people. I made a bingo boards and have a student draw a card. The student asks, 'Who is he?'
The other students guess, 'Is he Nobita's father?' ...

This also introduces possessives.

Even without the Cartoon bingo, it's still a good lesson. In general, the students like to draw and they have fun. I let them include their pets in the pictures as well. Some students will finish really quickly but just have them start on the speaking part first. They can tell you about their picture and answer your questions. Afterwards send them around the room to ask other students about their pictures. (They like the teacher role.) They can ask other students about their pictures as they are drawing.

what i sometimes try to do is get the kids to bring in individual photos of their family members (ie dad, mom, sister, brother, grandad, grandma). they give all their photos to me without showing anyone else in the class and we then sort them out into the family members categories. everyone then tries to work out which mom belongs to which student, which dad belongs to which student.etc etc. it can be a fun activity, especially when the kids choose the wrong people.

challenges- this activity does require some student self control to not spoil the game. it also requires the kids to bring in lots of photos, which some may forget and others dont have access to, but if you give the parents some notice, most are willing to help out. it also is a bit touchy when some kids are missing a family member, either from death or some other reason.

Hello, everyone. It has been some time since I lasted posted. As for a "family" game. I hand out sets of family cards (Mother, Father, Brother, Sister, etc.) The kids are to search for the same family member by calling out their card. For example, if I have a "father" card, I would yell out "Father, Father, Father!" to try and find my other partners. Once I find everyone, we come to the teacher and at the same time yell out the family member. The fastest group wins. I do this because I do not want to alienate those that are missing any family members or those that are only children. As a twist, I include a pet card like dog, cat or even a snake. Have fun!

Hi!
It's been a long time since I don't teach young learners, nut this year I am back into action!
As regards FAMILY, it's a very difficult topic, since children may lack their father or mother, so what I used to do, was to give them someone else's family. I used the Adam Family, for example, and kids loved it! Besides, it was easier for them to speak about this funny family, and you avoind having sad kids due to family matters.

I'm currently doing a unit on family with my elementary students, and one thing we did which they really seemed to enjoy was info-gap pairworks. I got mine out of an old Spanish book (Voces Y Vistas) but it wouldn't be to tough to make your own. The students divided into pairs, and each student had a family tree (A or B) with parents, grandparents, siblings and aunts/uncles/cousins. They couldn't look at the other person's family tree.
Student A had a list of questions (10 or so) to ask about Student B's pretend family, and vice-versa. The questions were things like "What's Jose's sister's name?" or "Who is Robert's aunt?", so it gave them lots of practice hearing the structures for posessives, plus they had to read the family tree to figure them out, so they had to process the information.
I also did a similar one that asked for ages instead of names.
This would be a great thing to make up your own worksheet for using one of your famous families. I was fortunate in being able to use a pre-made pairwork.
I thought the kids might get bored, but they really liked it, they focussed and were speaking the target language the whole time (I teach Spanish, btw)