On 11th November, Remembrance Day, we talked about remembering, showing respect and honouring the brave people who have helped to keep us safe and have made where we live the safe and peaceful place that it is today. We all deserve to live in peace.
We wondered… what does peace mean?
Peace is when you smile at someone and make the world a tiny bit brighter
Peace is when you hear a baby laugh, or give a hug to the hurt.
— Excerpt from a poem by 10-year-old Amaya M from Winnipeg
One way to show respect on Remembrance Day, or Poppy Day, as we sometimes call it, is to wear a poppy to show respect and remember soldiers and other people who have helped us in our lives.
What are Poppies?
A Poppy is a beautiful flower. We have a girl called Poppy in our class? Floral baby names bring in the delicateness of a flower and remind you of its beauty every time you call a child with that name. A poppy has lots of tiny black seeds which you might have seen or even eaten little black poppy seeds on a bagel for example. Poppies range in colour from white to purple and any shade of red, orange or pink in between.
W
hy do we wear Poppies?
Poppies are pretty but also very tough. The seeds can lay dormant/sleeping for a long time until the time/conditions are right for them to grow. They like soil that has been churned or dug up. Poppies grow best in this churned up soil. The boots of the soldiers in World War 1 churned up the soil in the fields in France. Soldiers are men and women who protect people living all around the world. Sometimes they get hurt when they’re trying to protect people, so we have a special day to make sure we remember them and thank them for what they do for us.
We wear red poppies to remember people who have helped us, white poppies as a symbol of remembrance and peace, black poppies to remember African and Caribbean contributions towards peace and purple poppies to remember animals that have helped us.
Poppies to wear for Remembrance Day are made and sold to raise money for soldiers who helped or help us live our lives in Peace. We made some very Pretty Poppies in the SK class, have a look at the results of our hard work….
We listened to some music called ‘The Last Post’ and heard these words…
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Then we had a 2 minutes silence, which is quite a hard thing to do in SK! The children were very respectful and sat very quietly, thinking about all the people who have helped them and helped us to have a lovely peaceful life.
To end the day, we thought about the brave soldiers and tried to remember a time when we were brave. We read two stories, one called ‘Brave Little Owl’ and the other called ‘Peace at Last’.