Winding up our History mini-unit

For the past few weeks, we have been engaged with the new History content from the Australian Curriculum for Year 2.
Our focus has been on our local War Memorial, as a site of cultural significance, and this has led us into exploration of Anzac Day and its associated symbols.
I have enjoyed the opportunity to make the history component of our learning more engaging for the students through a variety of craft activities.
I have written posts about these over the past few weeks during my planning, but I wanted to show some of the finished products in case they might be of use to others in the future.
Here is an example of the finished slouch hat:

The template for the slouch hat activity is available through my TpT store.
We also baked Anzac biscuits. This activity linked to History, Science and English.

One of my favourite activities (because it was both simple and fun) was our poppy potato prints. We ended up doing these in several steps. First we painted a blue wash and sprinkled it with a pinch of salt. The salt soaks up some of the moisture so it leaves patterns that look like clouds in the blue sky, and added a bit of interest to the activity. Next, we used a dry brush technique to make some green stems. We didn't try to match the stems one-to-one with the flowers because we were going for the "field" effect. Thirdly, we printed some bright red poppies with the potatoes. Once they were dry, we used dabs of glue to attach some real poppy seeds to the flower centres.

It is a very simple piece but they look effective as a frieze along one wall of my classroom and it gave the students an opportunity to experiment with a few different techniques.
I have a freebie poem activity about poppies that goes nicely with this idea.
For assessment, the students used an iPad app, SonicPics, to sequence some photos of the memorial and record some thoughts about how it has changed over time.
Next week we have two more simple art activities planned to finish up our War Memorial mini-unit, as well as a concept map as an assessment piece.
The first art activity is a simple watercolour rosemary using a cotton tip as a brush:

And the second will be a photo montage with crayon and watercolour based on the artwork of Patricia Mullins in the book, Only a Donkey.