Poppies and Patriotism...

Someone sought out my husband after church the day before memorial day to start an argument about the evils of patriotism.  I was so hurt and offended by this encounter that I really wanted to do something to start the girls knowing the cost of our freedoms.  Since it was Memorial Day, I thought we would do a poppy project.  My dad, himself an Army veteran who suffered a lifelong injury while serving in Germany, always bought the little red poppies from the veterans who sold them on Veterans' Day.  I thought this would be a good Sunday activity to connect with his memory and talk about these things.
We used this project, which I found on pinterest of course.
http://happyhooligans.ca/painted-coffee-filter-poppy-craft/
It was easy and fun.
First I reviewed on our timeline when the three wars we usually talk about; the Revolution, the Civil War, and WW2, happened (I've never liked WW1 very much- I think it's extra depressing....  And, to be fair, we have lived in a WW2 battlefield, Guam, and now live in Virginia, which was a Revolution and Civil War battlefield, so WW1 has always seemed more remote.).  So I briefly went over the nature of the war, showed them some pictures from wikipedia about trench warfare, then we read the poem, also from wikipedia, In Flanders Fields.  We read the end of this article from the Museum of American History, and we listened to some music from the Library of Congress, which is a wonderful resource!  I will definitely be using it more.  My Sweetheart is Somewhere in France. We looked at some pictures of corn poppies, and I told them about my dad always buying them to remember the soldiers who had died.  Then we made our poppies.

They turned out very prettily, and they look great standing in a jar on our counter.  And a couple weeks later when we went to Williamsburg, the girls recognized the poppies growing there and remembered our lesson!