Memorial Day Activities for Kids

Memorial Day is an important holiday that honors those who have died in warfare. While it often serves as a fun holiday that marks the beginning of summer, it’s actually quite a somber day, especially for those who have fallen service members in their families.

Take some time to talk about the meaning of Memorial Day with kids with these activities.

The Holiday Zone is a great place to start for basic information on the history of Memorial Day and lots of activities including songs, classroom activities, arts and crafts projects, recommended books, discussion questions and more. It even suggests a grade range for different printables and which ones would be appropriate for English language learners.

The Memorial Day word search from Homeschool of 1 gives you a chance to talk with kids about what the different words mean in relation to Memorial Day such as sacrifice, service and honor.

Read these Memorial Day poems at Woo Jr., and then have older kids write their own or talk about how poetry can help us remember loved ones or share stories about people who are no longer with us.

Poppies are a classic symbol of remembrance, particularly in the UK. Make this poppy craft from Nothing But Room while you talk about Memorial Day with your kids.

Combine talking about Memorial Day (or any patriotic holiday) with a little cutting practice with these printables from 3 Boys and a Dog.

Jessica Tobin has a flip book you can download from Teachers Pay Teachers all about Memorial Day that includes a passage to read, comprehension questions and true and false questions.

These Memorial Day color by number worksheets from Leap of Faith Crafting are good for any patriotic holiday and for kids who know their numbers up to 10. Simply Love Printables also has a set of coloring pages that are more specifically on theme for Memorial Day with images of soldiers and words of remembrance.

I don’t know why Pinterest just suddenly decided I needed to see all the content about task cards and task boxes for kids, but these ideas are great for the classroom to keep in centers or have on hand for early finishers. You can also use them at home as quiet bags or boxes for kids to use when younger siblings might be sleeping, or in the car for a non-screen activity.

Let’s take a look at some fine motor skill task cards and how you can use them to teach kids skills while they play.

Pre-K Pages has a nice set of playdough task cards you can use in boxes or bags with a little tray (or they can just work on the table if they are sitting at a table). Working with clay or play dough is a great fine motor skill exercise, or you can add these to your playdough center if you have one to give them a little bit of direction while they work.

Teaching Mama has a bunch of great ideas for fine motor task boxes, from practicing working a glue bottle to threading beads, using clothespins or scissors, dropping water, finger painting and more. There’s a free printable that shows all the task options she talks through in the post if you want to make your own little boxes, or just keep these ideas on hand when you’re ready to add some fine motor fun to your days.

One of the ideas she mentions in that post is working with a hole punch, and Early Learning Ideas has a whole bunch (the urge to write “hole bunch” is strong) of ideas for printables that help kids practice hole punching, whether it’s a strip with circles on it for them to punch or pictures that include circles for punching, these ideas make it a little more fun to practice this important skill.

My Happy Place Teaching has a whole post about using fine motor task boxes in kindergarten, and her paid resource includes more than 100 task ideas with printables. But if you don’t need 100 boxes you can still get some good ideas from this post about different tasks to include and why and when you can use them. She also mentions using them in the morning while you’re busy with kids coming in at different times, which is a great idea.

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