ANZAC Day is one of the primary public and cultural events in Australia and its significance has seen a resurgence in the last 10 years as we become increasingly aware of our country’s involvement in wars and conflicts.
Depending on the age of your children, you may find yourself in various conversations about the events of years ago, certain symbols like the parade, wreaths and songs, or even about modern wars and events.
Talking to your Kids
- Learn Yourself – Sometimes having to explain things to our families is a good prompt to make sure we know things ourselves. Take some time to research the basics or even do it together as a family. There are plenty of simple online resources … one example is a great explanation of ANZAC Day provided by the Australian War Museum – click here.
- Be Honest – As always we should try to give honest information but we need to give facts and talk about concepts that are age appropriate for our kids. War is horrible and its good to communicate that but without gory or frightening stories. Only you will know what is good for your children.
- Get Them Engaged – Research in education tells us that children learn best when they are highly interested, active and help make decisions about their learning. By learning through hands-on, sensory and real-life experiences about ANZAC Day, young children will have an opportunity to understand the importance of this national day, and its role in building peace in communities today. Often these activities will allow very natural discussion and story telling to occur without it being too forced.
Some ideas include:
- Go along to a march
- Do a colouring-in – ANZAC-colouring-in
- Do a wordsearch – ANZAC Day wordsearch
- Make some Anzac biscuits – Recipe here
- Drink some Black Tea
- Read a book to your kids about ANZAC Day.
We recommend ANZAC Ted by Belinda Landsberry or Meet the ANZACs by Claire Saxby.
At the end of the day we should keep it positive and simple. Focus on the “The spirit of ANZAC” through courage, mateship and sacrifice and chat about the freedom that we enjoy as a result of those many sacrifices.
Video
You could show this video to young ones if you thought it helped to start a discussion.
ANZAC Day Resources for Download
1. Wordsearch – A great way to use this with early primary students is to discuss each word as you find it.
Download an ANZAC Day wordsearch
2. ANZAC Day Colouring-In – Once again you could colour-in with your child and chat about the images at the same time.
