Memorial Day Crafts & Learning Links

Red Poppies: The Remembrance Flower - History & Craft

You can honor the fallen this Memorial Day by wearing a red poppy, otherwise known as a Remembrance Poppy. Wearing a red poppy is seen as offering tribute to the fallen as well as the future of living veterans, active-duty military personnel, and their families.

Despite being beautiful flowers, poppies are technically classified as weeds. They’re incredibly resilient, even growing in the most inhospitable landscapes — such as abandoned, desolate battlefields. The WWI battlefield landscapes were left devastated, but the emergence of red poppies in the early spring after the end of the war were seen as tiny beacons of hope.

Simple Red Poppy Memorial Day Craft Idea: You can have fun fashioning red poppies with your kids using coffee filters and red cupcake filters. Visit the Three Little Ferns blog for easy-to-follow instructions.

The poppy as a symbol of the remembrance of war casualties started with a poem inspired by these hearty poppies taking root in the desolate battlefields. In the spring of 1915, a Canadian artillery unit brigade surgeon named Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae saw bright red poppies blooming on the war-torn fields where so many WWI soldiers had lost their lives, and he was inspired to write “In Flanders Fields.”

"In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae

In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Two women were inspired by this poem, an American professor named Moina Michael and a Frenchwoman named Anna Guérin. They started campaigns to make the red poppy the official symbol of remembrance of war casualties. This movement gained traction in the United States when the National American Legion voted to use the poppy as the official U.S. national emblem of remembrance in 1920. Read more about the history of the Poppy and remembrance on History.Com.