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Activities for Families: Remembrance

In learning about the past it is always best to start in an environment that is familiar. All children have some understanding of the world of today, which they can use as a point of reference to compare against historical events. It is important for children to view the multi-cultural world in which they live as a continuation of society in the 1940s, not as completely detached from it.

The activities below will help children consider why it is important to remember the horrors of war. These activities should supplement formal education by giving a sense of what life was like in the 1940s, rather than a detailed factual knowledge of it. They are meant to be engaging - both for children and for the adults helping them - but not to appear to be part of a structured curriculum. You can do one or all of the activities, depending upon time.

Lest we forget

Activity 1

Read to your child the following quotation from 'Meditation XVII' by John Donne:

'No man is an island, entire of itself; ... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.'

Discuss what they think the quotation means, and how it could be related to Remembrance Day. Help your child to understand what individual words mean, and then gradually put the separate words together to make sense of the quotation. The meanings could include the idea that human beings of every kind, from every walk of life and in every society, do not live in isolation without contact with other people. We all have a relationship of some kind with friends and family, so are unhappy when they get hurt, or die.

Donne argues that as humans we all have a relationship with each other, so he would be upset when anyone died. The implication is that we should all care about any human being who is suffering. This idea will help children understand why everyone is affected by war, because as humans we are all upset by the death or suffering of any person caught up in war. Link this to the fact that people feel they need to remember the casualties of war many years later.

Read out loud the following extracts.

• Death In Oosterbeek
• The Telegram
• D-Day and Belsen Concentration Camp

These stories are available on the Story extracts page.

You could exclude the third extract if you think your child not yet of an age to be faced with the subject of concentration camps. Instead, you could explain that this is an extract from a nurse on the front line.

After you have read the extracts discuss the questions below.

Discuss how a terrible shock can distort memory, or an event can be so terrible that a person cannot talk about it. Describe how people who have witnessed the events of war can be so traumatised that they can talk about it only in brief factual terms, which means details are excluded. Explain how hard it was for some people who had experienced the horrors of war to record their stories on the WW2 People's War website, and why it is important to remember these people.

Sailors, soldiers, airmen and civilians

Activity 2

Print out a selection of photographs from the Story extracts page, and place in an old shoe box. Tell your child that you found the box in an attic/loft/charity shop, and would like to build up a picture of who the people in the photographs were, because you think it sad that they appear to have been forgotten. Use the questions below to help your child analyse the photographs.

This activity may take some time if you have very imaginative children. You will need to question them constantly to ensure that they can support all their decisions with evidence from the photographs. At the end of this activity the children will discover that there is limited information you can deduce from photographs, so that much of the story of a person's life can easily be lost. Link this to the importance of remembering and recording memories - in the process the children will gain considerable general information about life in the period.

Ask your child to pick a photograph, and to write a poem of remembrance and forgiveness to go with it. Explain that not all types of poem rhyme, and that therefore their poem does not necessarily have to rhyme. This is often what scares children about writing poetry. Afterwards you could read the whole story that relates to their poem and their photograph on the People's War site. You should check it is suitable to read with your own child, as you may prefer only to summarise it.

Read out loud the following quotation:

'Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.'

Discuss this with your child/children, and ask them what they think it means. Link this to why it is important that everyone, young and old, continues to learn about history, and to remember the horrors of the past.

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