Dear Reader,
Veteran’s Day is important in our family, although it’s not really celebrated besides telling our veteran family members a hearty thank you. I remember, however, inviting my grandparents to my Veteran’s Day programs at my school as a child, and they mean something to me as an adult. Although preschool isn’t gradeschool, and Covid has changed things this year (lots of elderly veterans in a school with young kids that *hopefully* have a good grasp on hygiene, and a virus that attacks the older generations the hardest? Yeah, that can’t possibly be a danger), but I still wanted to talk to my kiddo about why this day means so much.
There are a lot of people in the US that associate the poppy more with Memorial Day, but internationally, the poppy is a symbol of veterans day. And I think it is an easier symbol for preschoolers to understand than camo or soldiers or stars and stripes. Bright red is a strong color, a color with emotion, and the color of blood. Black is easily understood as dark, although I think that it’s association with death is above a preschooler’s symbol-association abilities.
I was running behind on some things today so I asked my teen to draw the flower. It was a good way to get her involved. And I think she did a good job! I told her to make it bigger and that the paper would cover it all so not to bother erasing, but it was still a shame to cover her artwork. I was pretty relieved to not have to draw it!
To be truthful, the main benefit of this activity is the bilateral movement in tearing the paper. And that takes a surprising amount of concentration, apparently, because it took us a long time to want to tear the paper, and I thought that is something she would have been all about! But it was such a pain to keep her on task! Once the paper was torn, it was pretty quick to dab some glue and tell her to stick the paper on the glue dots. She definitely liked that part better.
I think it turned out pretty cute! And it was a good activity to talk about veterans and who our family veterans are and why they’re important. I pray that my daughter can grow up respecting freedom and the men who fight/fought for us to have it.
