4 easy Veterans Day Activities and crafts for elementary kids

Happy Veteran’s Day! We had a busy day in first grade with these fun and thoughtful Veterans Day activities celebrating our Veterans!

Learning About Veterans Day

On Tuesday, we read a Pebble Go article about Veterans to build our background knowledge. Throughout the week, we used that built on that knowledge with some Patriotic reading passages and books about Veterans Day and other patriotic holidays.

Side Note: We do take time in first grade to talk about our patriotic holidays like Veterans Day and September 11th. I think it is so important to expose kids early to our history and values as a country. They can handle it! And starting early makes it easier to talk about it as they grow older!

But today, it was all about honoring our Veterans. I had a few Veterans Day activities I wanted to accomplish today…and we made it…by the hair on our chiny, chin, chin! (Ever had one of THOSE days??? Yep, that was me today!)

Letters to Veterans

Last week, I sent an email to parents asking for any Veterans in our first graders’ immediate family. We spent the morning writing thank you letters {on this Veterans Day paper!} to the 4 Veterans that were sent to me. The kids really took a lot of pride in this and so it was a more time consuming project than I thought it would be!

Since we had 4 veterans to write about, each table group was assigned a vet to write to. And I divided my extra groups so that about 6 kids wrote for each person.

Thank A Veteran Book Covers

For one of our next Veterans Day activities, they worked in their group of 6 to make book covers for the letters once we finished our thank you letters to Veterans. I gave them the green construction paper with a military hat outline on it. They used tear art to create a camo hat and fancy title letters for their cover!

Veterans Day craft - book cover camo tear art

Poppy Pin Veterans Day Craft

Okay, confession. Yes, I know that poppies are more for during Memorial Day. And I’ve made them on that holiday before. But let’s be real. Memorial Day is one of the very last days of school around here and it just made more sense to move it to Veterans Day. And I don’t think they mind!

So for the last of our Veterans Day activities, we made poppy pins to wear in honor of the sacrifices our Veteran’s make for us every day. We read the history of Flanders Field. We watched the short video clip of Linus reading the Flanders Field poem. (And by the way, if you’ve never been to the WWI Museum in Kansas City to see the poppy field display, you’ve missed out. One of the more moving things I’ve seen.)

Then, we made our own poppies! Here’s how…

You will need…

2 red cupcake wrappers per child
1-2 inch strips of green construction paper
paper clip or clothespin
black crayon

Steps

1. Flatten both wrappers. Cut about 1/2 inch off of one of the wrappers.
2. Add black “seeds” in the middle of the smaller wrapper.

cutting the inside piece for the poppy pin

3. Glue smaller wrapper to the middle of the larger, uncut wrapper.
4. Twist the green strip to make a stem.

Adding black seeds on the inside of the cupcake liner for our poppies

5. Hot glue the stem to the back.
6. Hot glue the paperclip or clothespin on top of the stem.
7. Attach the pin to your shirt!

hot glue a paperclip on the back to wear it

So fun and the kids absolutely LOVED wearing these poppy pins today! Such a beautiful reminder of the sacrifices that are made each day! Thank you Veterans!