Teaching young children about ‘remembering’ on Remembrance Day

On Remembrance Day, many early childhood services, schools, workplaces and community organisations stop to reflect and commemorate the end of World War I. But it is so much more than that.

 

For young children, what does this mean, and how much do they understand? How can we support children’s understanding, while acknowledging the historical and cultural challenges of these community rituals and stories of service and sacrifice?

 

Free research-based resources 

 

Our free, online research-based resources provide educators and parents with tools to assist children understand this and other cultural ‘rememberings’, and how we do that individually, in groups and as a community. The storybook we co-created is called We Remember: Australia’s Story. 

 

It is a multi-layered book that is scaffolded to ensure different sections are relevant for various age groups. An adult can read certain sections of the book for preschool-aged children, or extra sections of the book to suit older children up to aged 12.

Different resources for a range of learners

 

The We Remember: Australia’s Story resources have a range of free offerings to suit different learning styles. These include:

 

• a downloadable, printable children’s storybook
• an eBook
• an interactive
• audio and video read-along recordings for preschool age readers
• Key Word Sign read along versions for children living with language learning delays, autism and hearing impairment.
• downloadable educational activities, such as puzzles, puppets, maths and language games, card games, board games and storytelling activities.
• a song written by Massiel Barros-Torning, with downloadable lyrics and chords for guitar or keyboard accompaniment, and a recording of Massiel performing the song.

Feedback for the resources

 

All our resources have been evaluated by educators, parents and support workers. They have been improved based on this feedback.

 

When using this resource, one educator said:

This is a fantastic resource that I would like to use… I love the diversity of characters introduced at the start of the book (fantastic to see historically marginalised people represented here, and the inclusion of their biographies and prompt questions was great)… Thank you for a wonderful resource which must have taken a lot of time and effort to create.

We welcome further feedback which educators and parents can leave on our site. We take the feedback seriously and use it when we have the opportunity to revise the resources, and create new ones (funding dependent).

 

An award and ideas for new resources

 

In 2022, our Child and Family Resilience Programs storybook and interactive resources were given the ‘Distinctive Work’ Award from the Council of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS). We have many other resources to support children from Defence, Veteran, First Responder and Remote Worker families. Thanks to in-kind funding from the Manna Institute, we now also offer free Personalised Programs to assist parents, educators and support workers quickly find the best resources for their child, or the child they support.

 

There are modules for children (2-12 years), and their parents, educators and support workers. Currently, we are working on co-designing and co-creating resources with our partners (Australian and Canadian), and those with lived experience to better support children whose parents have a moral injury, and those that relocate frequently. If you have further ideas for resources, we are happy to hear from you.