How do you dress "American"?

My daughter Bella goes to daycare and every year they have a week where they celebrate the kids by calling it "The Week of the Child". I think it's like when I was a high school student it was called "Sprit Week".

PJ day, Hat day, Crazy Hair day, Mix and Match day, however it always ends on Friday with Heritage Day. And that's today.

I think it's great to celebrate where your family comes from. Knowing your roots and their journeys to America allows one to connect with the past. In our families case it's a bit tougher.

On both our side of the family we have lived somewhere in America for 9+ generations on either side.

My husband on his Maternal father's side to pre Revolutionary America.

My paternal's side can be traced back to the French-Indian War (the guy got drugged and taken from France. Then he deserted the war and set up a home near present day Thunder Bay (not really sure of the location, really)).

On my husband's father's side the ties to South San Francisco, CA go back to a few generations then they go to Italy, as the story goes, the guy was traveling on a ship to Peru, got to drunk the night before his stop, and woke up just as the ship was leaving for San Francisco and when he got to San Francisco he decided to stay.

So the question is how do I dress up my daughter for Heritage day when America is her heritage? Do I dress her up as a Gypsy and try to explain to the parents that she does have some Gypsy blood in her, or do I go Norwegian, Cech Republic, French, Irish, English, French-Canadian? Or do I go the state route South Dakota? Wisconsin? Minnesota? Michigan? Illinois? California? Or some where in between?

Also this year we have homework, well Bella has homework from Day Care:



We don't know what to put on it, well we can appease the daycare and put random flags, pictures of our family, but unless we find a map of the world and glue it on or even printout the family tree to show the depth of her heritage it sucks for us, the parents.

I'll update this with the finished product once we figure out what we are going to do. As it is due Monday.

How do you tell your kids about your heritage? Do you hyphenate as in "I am an (place)-American" or you do what my husband's grand father did, when they took the Census one year, and just say "I am an American"? I can tell you when I heard that was pretty stoked because that is what we all are American.