Even though November 11th is Monday, there may be ceremonies in some places this weekend to honor Remembrance Day and Veterans Day. Participating in community events is not just part of kindergarten readiness, it’s part of what joins all of us together. Including children where and when appropriate helps support their social awareness and development.
Explaining the significance of this day so that it is meaningful to children is hard to do, but a simple story helps, like A Poppy Is to Remember by Heather Patterson and Ron Lightburn. Often on Remembrance Day, we see soldiers and other people in uniforms and many people wear poppies. Children already know about flowers and how they grow, not just in gardens and pots, but wild along the road sides, in fields, and in parks. It is much easier to share the story with children that a long time ago when there was a war many people died. In the fields around the graves, poppies grew wild and now, when we wear a poppy, we are thinking of all the soldiers.
This time of year we not only remember the fighting and the war, we think of why soldiers fought–so that we can live in peace–and it is important for us to remember and to think of how we can live peacefully in the world. That’s what we think about when we have two very quiet minutes and why we wear a poppy. We will remember…