Daisykins' Remembrance Day 2018

Learning the importance of Remembrance Day

At Daisykins Day Nursery in Rugby, we strongly believe that it is important for children to learn about commemorative days such as Remembrance Day. To highlight the importance of this years Remembrance Sunday our fantastic practitioners set up a variety of activities for the children to engage in, all contributing towards the Daisykins' Wall Memorial.The children in Baby Room made their own poppies using paint, incorporating their recent found enjoyment of engaging in sensory activities. The babies excitedly sat around the creative table as the practitioners put their aprons on and soon became very messy, rolling their hands in the paint and printing onto the paper to make their poppies. The children were also given the choice of using paint brushes and were encouraged to choose how they wanted to paint their poppy.Toddler Room experimented with a variety of brushes and sponges, exploring the different marks that they made as they printed '100' in red, green and black paint. The children thoroughly enjoyed getting messy with this painting activity and showed pride in seeing their painting on the window in their room.The children and practitioners in Pre-School Minors made their very own soldier using a range of resources. The children used a circular shape, dipping it into the paint and pressing it down onto the shape of the soldier. Frank, as the children now call him, was attached to the left side of the wall memorial and attracted a lot of positive comments from those spectating Sunday's Remembrance Parade. They also created their own poppies with paint and decorated Soldier's Medals.Pre-School decorated their windows with soldiers, poppies and Remembrance related words using paint, oil pastels, glitter and many other resources. The children and practitioners painted silhouettes of soldiers in a field full of poppies onto the main window with the famous poem 'In Flanders Fields' by John McCrae either side. The window to the left of the building was filled with poppies made from a variety of materials, shaped into '100', with bunting and Remembrance related words either side and the window to the right had a giant poppy painted onto the middle window, with a poppy in the centre of a cross either side.The Pre-School children also printed the shape of a poppy using an apple that was cut in half, using a paintbrush and black paint to add the centre of the poppy and green paint to add the leaf. The children really enjoyed painting their poppies onto the laminating sheets, especially when watching the practitioner as they put each one through the laminator. This sparked great conversation about the use of a laminator, how to use it safely and how it works. [ngg src="galleries" ids="262" display="basic_slideshow"]On Friday 9th November, the children participated in a minutes silence at 11am. They learnt about the importance of the eleventh hour and why Remembrance Day is on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The practitioners were extremely proud of the children who were impeccably behaved, sitting patiently, demonstrating the nursery's 'good sitting' rule without making a noise for the duration of the silence.