Memorial Day Ideas for Parents

Provide families with these Memorial Day ideas for parents to help their kids explore and understand the importance of Memorial Day.

Memorial Day Ideas for Parents

Don’t let Memorial Day pass by without helping your kids understand the importance of honoring others. Great ways to observe Memorial Day include:

1. Visiting and tending the graves of loved ones.
2. Visiting a museum or memorial dedicated to national heroes.
3. Wearing a red poppy to honor those who died serving the country (for more information, go to www.usmemorialday.org.)
4. Sharing stories about loved ones.
5. Observing the National Moment of Remembrance, a resolution passed in December 2000. It’s observed with a moment of silence at 3 p.m. to honor our fallen heroes.
6. Discussing what it means to be a hero.

Tracing Your Family Tree

Over Memorial Day weekend, trace your family’s roots by creating a family tree keepsake with your children. This is a wonderful way to help kids understand the Memorial Day holiday. It also helps them learn about their roots and remember loved ones who’ve passed away.

First, cut out a brown construction paper tree trunk and three large green construction paper circles. Then glue the trunk to a large sheet of paper. Next, overlap the three large circles to make the leaves of the tree at the top of the tree trunk. Then cut out a red construction paper apple for each ancestor you add to the family tree.

Next, place apples in the center of the tree with your children’s names and birthdays written on each apple. Then directly above your children’s apples, place apples side-by-side with the same information for yourself and your children’s mother or father. Continue to branch out with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. Or, you can keep the tree simple by adding only immediate relatives, such as parents and grandparents.

If you’d like to make the tree more detailed or continue the project, your family can research to find distant relatives. You can also research their country of origin or occupation. If you’d like more information on how to search your family’s ancestry, check out one of these websites: www.familytreemaker.com; www.ancestry.com; or www.genhomepage.com.

Looking for even more great ideas for Memorial Day? Check out all our Memorial Day posts.