Edible Family Tree Activity for Kids and Teens

Children and youth love this edible family tree activity. It’s a light hearted way to introduce family history and to start exploring your family identity.

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Create an Edible Family Tree

What You'll Find on This Page

Creating an edible family tree is a fun way to explore family history! Collect a few family stories about people in the tree to enjoy while you eat your creations!

A friend who knows I LOVE crafts sent me this idea to try and write about. All four of my kids loved it, and I delighted in seeing each child put their stamp on the family members they were assigned to decorate.

We used gluten free shortbread cookies for this activity, but this sugar cookie recipe would work well, too. Use a wide mouth mason jar to cut out the circles if you make your cookies from scratch.

Cookie Topping Ideas

The sky’s the limit with how you decorate these family tree cookies! Here are some ideas that worked well for us:

Mini chocolate chips made great curly hair.
Full size chocolate chips created delightfully dramatic eyebrows.
White chocolate chips sliced into noses.
Starbursts were sculpted into mouths and used to create comically large (and square!) ears.
Pretzels worked for hair.
Frosting held everything in place and served as a base for the face. We used the frosting recipe from this post.
Nutella carefully painted on to create hair. You can also mix nutella with vanilla frosting for a range of skin tones, although my kids didn’t bother with that this time.

More Fun Ideas for Exploring Family History With Kids and Teens

Here are a few more activities you can use to keep on celebrating family history.

Do you have a family tree activity or family history idea I can include in this post? Let me know! Please share photos of your cookies if you try this fun activity!

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