What’s Memorial Day besides a day for the grill and a family picnic? Or just a day off from school?
Would you like to make it much more in your classroom? You can make a Memorial Day memory for your students while honoring our country’s fallen heroes.
Memorial Day was originally named Decoration Day, and it was a day for decorating the graves of those who gave their lives in war. Later proclaimed Memorial Day, it has long marked the beginning of summer for many of us.
Some of us will be finished with the school for the year, some of us will be wishing we were, and some of us are moms looking for instructional ideas for teaching moments at home. Whichever category fits you, here’s hoping these ideas will pique your interest.
5 Ways to Celebrate Memorial Day
1. Host a veteran. Memorial Day is about those we lost in war, but any activity that heightens our awareness of that experience is bound to be educational. Invite a veteran to your classroom. Ask him or her to share lunch with you. Brainstorm questions with the students ahead of time so they’re ready.
2. Write letters. Has your community recently lost a soldier? Make a class card for that fallen soldier’s family. Do you have students whose relatives are serving our country? Do the same, thanking them for their service. Remind the students that many of those who now serve have lost friends in the line of duty, and make that Memorial Day connection.
3. Read The Wall by Eve Bunting. It’s a children’s book, but it’s touching no matter what your students’ ages. Talk about The Wall. Ask students what they would design if they could create a memorial for our fallen soldiers. Art projects may result!
4. Make a graph. Do a little research and gather statistics on the numbers of soldiers lost in different wars. Make a graph. There’s a great online tool called Create a Graph that you can use. This can really drive the point home—a picture is truly worth a thousand words.
5. Read “In Flanders Field” by John McCrae. This is a great one for older students. It’s a beautiful poem penned in 1915, with a sweet story behind it. And while reading, you can define terms like tetrameter, sonnet, stanza, and rhyme scheme. Then let students try their hand at poetry that memorializes our fallen heroes.
These are just a few ideas, but hopefully they stir some creative juices. Put on your red, white, and blue thinking cap and come up with a way to put a personal face on Memorial Day for your students.
We all know kids are the best teachers, so rest assured—your classroom support of our fallen heroes will spread from family to family.
Make a memory for your students this Memorial Day.
*photo credit, creative commons flickr / post written by Laura Groves
