* I work at a University. Has anyone seen this building in town? This is like school for grown ups. Its where you go if you want to know as much about something as anyone knows. Everyone can go - you just have to want to find things out. Does anyone know anyone who has been to University? I went to a school just like this one, and nobody I knew had been to University. But I wanted to go, so I did my school work and when I finished school, I went to University to learn. Now I teach at the University, just like your teachers! Inside, it looks like anywhere else but on special days like the last day students are here, they play dress up like this! * At a University we do two things: teach, and research. Research is finding things out. We try to find out about everything there is to know. * My research is in counting things. Does anyone here like to count things? Who has counted the number of steps in your house? Who has more than ten? Who has counted the steps from the river to school? Can anyone tell me how many steps there are? Are there more than 30? * My job is to find interesting things to count, that nobody has thought of counting before. Sometimes these things are easy to count, but sometimes they are tricky. And some times, they tell you surprising things. This is me. By counting, I found out I was a prince! Are any of you a prince or princess? Well, my counting shows that some of you might be too. If you’re paying attention, you might find out if it is you! * I found this out by counting families. Lets look at my family. You might also want to think about your family. It might be a bit different, but the counting is the same. * Imagine that this is me. Where did I come from? Everyone comes from their parents - half from their mum, and half from their dad! So lets draw me and my mum and dad above me, like this. Drawing people like this is called making a family tree. Lets move us all down to make room -there we go. Who am I making room for? * And where did my parents come from? From their mum and dad! These are my grandparents. Does anyone here have grandparents? Everyone had grandparents, because everyone has parents, even parents. Did teachers have grandparents? So we have two parents, each of which had two parents, making how many grandparents? * And where did your Grandparents come from? Their mum and dad! They each have two parents. Four grandparents, with two parents each, makes how many great grantparents? Can you help me count them? These parents, grandparents, great grandparents.. there is a special word for them. They are your ancestors. * There is a special word for counting how many times we count parents. Parents are our ancestors, from 1 generation. Grandparents are our ancestors, and from, how many generations? Lets count - 1,2. Great grandparents is from how many? Lets count them! 1,2,3 generations. * Does anyone know what a cousin is? Its someone who has some of the same grandparents as you. Does anyone have a cousin? Someone who has some of the same ancestors as you is also a cousin. Someone who is a cousin is family. * Does anyone here have family that are from a different country? Is there anyone with family in India? How about Africa? How about Poland? Anywhere else you’d like to tell me about? * Now we are going to see how big our families are, and where they are. Who here is good at counting? What is the biggest number you know? * You only have to count to little numbers of generations to get lots of ancestors! Put your hand up if you can count to 7? How many ancestors do you think you might have after 7 generations? * After 7 generations, you have over 100 ancestors. Can you help me count the generations? * Put your hand up if you can count to 20. After 20 generations, you could have one million ancestors! A miliion is a thousand thousand, it is a lot of ancestors! It is more than the number of people that live in Bristol, where we all live. Lets all count to 10. If we carried on counting like that, without sleeping, it would take 2 weeks to get to one million! * This is King Charlemagne. He lived over 1000 years ago, and was King of lots of countries. That is long enough so that I have so many ancestors, that everyone alive in Europe was my ancestor! He had lots of children, and it is almost certain that some of them are my ancestors. I am his 45-greats grandson. * Now, here is the fun bit. Put your hand up if you think that you might also be the lots-of-greats grandchild of King Charlemagne….? * So, keep your hand up if you are a prince or a princess? Here are some crowns for all of us! * And if we are all lots-of-great grandchildren of King Charlemagne, and lots of other people who were alive at the time, can anyone remember the word for what we are to each other? * Look to the person next to you. Say, “hello cousin!” Look the other way. say “Hello, cousin!” again! * This is true of everyone in the world! We are all cousins, Even with people who live in far away places like Africa, Syria, and the other places we talked about. * I hope you found it interesting to count ancestors?