Lest We Forget

This week our school recognized the sacrifices our Canadian Military have made over the years with Remembrance Day activities and an assembly.  Our class was honoured to have World War II veteran, James Magill, of the Royal Canadian Airforce join us.  He is the great grandfather of one of our Super Kids.  He shared that he was just 19 years old when he volunteered and served from 1940 -1945. He shared his medals and explained what each one was for.  He was awarded “The Distinguished Flying Cross” for valour.  His lovely words put what we had been talking about as a class into prospective for the kids.   Mr. Magill shared his thoughts about how lucky we are to live in Canada and how war is sometimes necessary for the greater good of all mankind.  He brought pictures of the plane he flew and the men he had the pleasure of serving with.  His stories and demeanour reminded me of my own grandfather who also fought in the war.  When I got home I had to give my dad a call and tell him all about the man my class meet today and how he was just like his father. 🙂

   

One of the questions the class asked this week was why do people wear poppies.  We discussed how they’re made, why they’re made, where you can get them, and how the money goes to veterans and their families.  I find this topic difficult to explain to my class of 5-8 year olds.  The concept of war is very big so the only way I know to explain it is to relate it to our playground.  We discussed how the world is like a playground.  Sometimes you get along with others and sometimes you have disagreements.  It is how you solve those problems that is important.  You have to use your words and listen to each other.  Sometimes countries can’t use their words or compromise.  They fight each other and Canada’s role is to try to help keep the peace and help those countries talk.  Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t.  One Super Kid said that the world leaders need to come to our school to learn how to talk to each other and use our classroom peacemaker book.  🙂

The class learned about the artist Georgia O’Keeffe.  We looked at her flower art pieces specifically looking at her poppy artwork.   We read the book “Through Georgia’s Eyes” to fully explore her as an artist.

    

We noticed that she zooms in when creating her pieces.  One Super Kid said it is like we’re a bug on the flower.  We took inspiration from her and created our own poppy art pieces that were displayed during our Remembrance Day assembly.