Remembrance Day Craft and Book Idea!

Do you have some craft items lying around the house? Why not make your own poppy to wear with pride? You can honour our soldiers by wearing a poppy for Remembrance day.

WHAT YOU NEED TO MAKE A POPPY FOR REMEMBRANCE DAY

• coffee filters
• food colouring or liquid watercolours (you can use shades of red, orange, pink and purple)
• black buttons
• paint brushes
• ice cube tray or small bowls
• pipe cleaner
• safety pin
• plastic table cloth

HOW TO MAKE YOUR REMEMBRANCE DAY POPPY

1. Lay out your table cloth.
2. Start by adding a small amount of water to an ice cube tray (only fill each ice cube section about half-way with water.
3. Add 2-3 drops of food colouring. (For the liquid watercolours, use 6 to 8 drops per section, maybe more).
4. Place the ice cube tray in a shallow pan to prevent it from being tipped over.
5. Take several coffee filters and crumple them up before you paint them. When crumpling and flattening the coffee filters out you can provide lots of vocabulary. Use words such as crumple, squeeze, rough, big, small, wrinkly, smooth, tight and loose.
6. Next, use paintbrushes to dab and smear, and watch as the coffee filters absorb the water, and the colours spread and blend together. This is a great opportunity to use more vocabulary such as absorb, disappear, color and mixture. Talk about how the filter is absorbing the water.
7. To intensify the colour you can add a drop or two of food colouring directly to the wet coffee filter.
8. To dry the coffee filters, you can put them on a drying rack or on a cookie sheet and let them dry or place a small fan in front of them to speed up the drying time.
9. To make them into a poppy, layer two coffee filters and pinch them together at the back. Wrap a short pipe cleaner around the pinched section of paper to secure everything together.
10. To complete your poppy glue black buttons to the centers of your poppies.
11. Using a safety pin you can attach a poppy to your clothes or coat and wear your poppy proudly for Remembrance Day.

EXTENSION ACTIVITY: READ A REMEMBRANCE DAY BOOK! 

There are many books written about Remembrance day. One of my favourites is “The Peace Book” by Todd Parr.

The description of this book was laid out nicely by Blair Christolon, Prince William Public Library System, Manassas, VA. “The concept of peace can be a difficult one to understand, and Parr makes an admirable attempt to explain it. He relates the notion to making new friends, listening to different kinds of music, and helping your neighbor. Where he stretches it a bit is with sentiments such as, “Peace is wishing on a star” or “…watching it snow,” even if the images are tranquil. Bright primary colors and bold black outlines define cartoonlike characters (animal and human) with smiling features. A helpful and engaging book that’s sure to spark discussion.”

Let’s all be thankful this Remembrance day and wear our handmade poppies proud and learn about peace from Todd Parr.

*craft idea taken from Pinterest

Gwen is a Communicative Disorders Assistant with more than 17 years of experience working with a diverse client base. Her experiences have provided her with the wonderful opportunity to be associated with adults suffering from brain injuries, those that have experienced a stroke, children with articulation and language difficulties and children who have a limited word repertoire.