Lest We Forget: Remembrance Day / Veterans Day Poppy Crafts for Preschoolers

Hendrik and I have been talking quite a bit about Remembrance Day throughout the last week, and since we wear poppies to remember, he thought that we should have some poppies in our house to help us remember when we're at home. It's a difficult subject to approach with someone so young, and we didn't go into many details, but I feel strongly that if we are going to raise our children as engaged citizens of this country and the world we need to involve them in these types of days from a young age.

He really wanted to wear the poppy that I bought from the Air Cadet at the store, but I wasn't about to let him run around the house with a straight pin in his shirt - so we compromised with this very simple craft.

I folded a piece of red construction paper in half, and drew half of a simple poppy-shaped flower on the crease. After cutting it out, I cut out a small circle of black construction paper, and glued it on. It's not technically necessary to do this, but using the same colours that your child will be tissue-papering will make it more clear where they're putting the tissue paper.  Before we got started with the glue, I put a small piece of scotch tape on the back of the poppy and stuck it to a sheet of newspaper so that it wouldn't move around and make a mess while we were working on it.

I took out some squares of black and red tissue paper, and then added some glue to the centre of the poppy. Hendrik crumpled the tissue paper up into small balls, and stuck the on the glue.

When we finished with the centre, I took away the remaining black tissue paper, applied a generous amount of glue to the red of the poppy, and Hendrik went to town with covering it up with crumpled red tissue paper. He enjoyed destroying the tissue paper.

One we finished with the tissue paper, we set it aside and let the glue dry.  Afterwards, I took a safety pin and carefully poked it through the bottom layer of construction paper on the back of the poppy, and then fastened it to his sweater. 

And, out comes the contact-paper stained glass again! This is SUCH an easy and versatile craft, I love it! I folded a piece of black construction paper in half, and drew a basic poppy shape on the crease. After I cut it out, I cut the inside out, leaving about a 1.5" border.  I cut a piece of clear contact paper to size and carefully laid the unfolded poppy outline down on the sticky surface. (Taping the contact paper to the table, sticky side up, makes this process much easier.) I stuck a black dot in the middle of the flower, and Hendrik took care of covering the rest of the inside of the flower with squares of red tissue paper. When he finished, I cut another piece of contact paper and stuck it to the back, then trimmed the excess contact paper off of the edges.

As we've been talking about Remembrance Day and making poppies, Hendrik and I have been singing this song that I learned in about grade 2. I have no idea who wrote it, and I would have posted a more professional version of the song, but there really isn't much online about it. Here are the lyrics, and then below is a video of Hendrik helping me sing the song. (He moves & bobs his head just like his daddy - a choir boy already!)

Song for Remembrance Day
Soldiers and Sailors, and Airmen, too, 
Fought for us across the sea
Brave and unselfish, strong and true,
Keeping Canada free!

I'll wear my poppy on Remembrance Day
to show I'm Proud of what they did for me.
"God bless our country" is the prayer I pray,
"God keep Canada free!"

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Unfortunately we didn't get out to a service today, and while I had the radio on, our Little Lady fell down the stairs precisely at the beginning of the 2 minutes of silence. I look forward to taking the kids to a service at the Canadian Warplane Museum sometime in the next few years. The choir that I was a part of in university used to sing at the service every year, and Song for Athene became a regular piece. Give it a listen, and turn crank the volume on those speakers right up: the end of the piece will send shivers down your spine (and make you forget about my singing in the previous video).