Anzac Day Activities for Kids

April 17, 2024 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

Anzac Day is basically the Australian and New Zealand equivalent of Memorial Day or Remembrance Day. Anzac stands for Australia New Zealand Army Corps, and it commemorates in particular the conflict at Gallipoli in World War I, though it’s generally a way to honor all those who have died in service to the country.

While it’s a heavy thing to talk to kids about, it’s important for them to know the meaning of these important holidays and to learn more about them.

KidsKonnect has some good facts about the day and printable worksheets about the historical figures involved, what Anzac means and the flags of the different countries that mark Anzac Day.

Twinkl.au has a printable Anzac Day medal worksheet so kids can design their own memorial. They also have a printable silhouette craft and coloring pages including soldiers, poppies, wreaths and more. (These require a free account to download.)

Foundation into First talks about how to talk about Anzac Day with younger kids, and they have a set of Anzac Day activities for grades 1-3 on Teachers Pay Teachers.

A Few Small Adventures has a great collection of picture books about Gallipoli, World War I and Anzac Day to read with kids. Top Teaching Tasks has some great ideas for older kids such as researching war memorials, finding a soldier and taking a virtual tour of Gallipoli.

Poppies are a well-known decoration used for remembrance, and kids can make poppy crafts such as this bottle cap field of poppies from Danya Banya or some of these crafts done by Happy Hooligans. I love the cupcake liner poppy, which is shown here.

If you have access to a kitchen or are willing to bake at home you can also make Anzac biscuits, which are said to have been made by the soldiers’ wives because they could stay fresh for a really long time while they were away from home. Get a recipe from Recipe Tin Eats.

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Learning about Australia for Kids

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Sun Activities for Kids

With summer coming soon in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s a fun time to incorporate activities and crafts with a sunny theme. Take some time to learn about the sun (this post from National Geographic Kids is a good one) and then do some sun activities.

Sun prints are a classic summer activity, and there are lots of ways to do them, from placing objects on construction paper (like in this craft from MomBrite) or by using sun print paper (aka cyanotype paper).

Practice threading, counting, color sorting and other skills with this easy sun threading activity from Taming Little Monsters.

Lessons 4 Little Ones has a great blog post full of ideas for science experiments using the sun, such as melting crayons, looking at shadows, making a sun dial and trying a solar oven. Printables to go with the lessons are available for purchase or you can just talk through the students’ hypotheses about what will happen and draw or otherwise record the results.

This updraft tower from Almost Unschoolers is a cool way to illustrate that the heat of the sun causes an updraft, which makes the pinwheel spin. This is a good one to do inside near a sunny window so you don’t have wind spinning the pinwheel instead.

You’ll want to get out in the sun to try this experiment form Life with Moore Babies to see what kinds of things the sun can melt. Using different kinds of sweets you can see how the sun melts things by itself and how you can concentrate the power of the sun with a magnifying glass.

Playing with shadows is fun for kids of all ages, and you can track a shadow through the day with this experiment from Science Sparks. If you’re working with multiple kids they can each choose an object to shadow (ha!) and at the end of the day you can see how different their shadows looked.

And of course you’ll want to make a sun themed suncatcher craft, right? This one from Fox Farm Home uses all the pretty flowers you collect on your nature walk and puts them in a sun-shaped frame.

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