Anzac Day projects

ANZAC Day Art Activities

Anzac Day is Thursday the 25th of April. In Victoria this year, 2024, this is week 2 or Term 2. So I’m planning to start Term 2 with an Anzac Day lesson so there is some work to put on display in the school during week 2. You may want to fill some lessons at the end of this Term in preparation. It’s a day we’re usually asked to respond to at school, so I’ve compiled all my successful and varied projects from over the past 10 years to give you some guidance and inspiration.

It can get a bit dry doing the same idea every year with every single class. You’ll also notice I have a range from super simple crafting to more challenging projects that tick off lots of your art essential learnings. They offer a range of art techniques from stencilling and silhouettes to learning about foreground, middle ground and background, positive and negative space and Indigenous perspectives. There’s 3D paper sculpting, collagé, painting, drawing, printmaking and technical drawing projects below.

You don’t have to see celebration and memorial days as an extra thing to fit in to your planning, it can become a quick one lesson extra assessment task before report writing and an opportunity to teach some big art concepts. Read on…I’ve got your engaging Anzac Day art projects covered.

ANZAC Red Poppies

These lovely big floppy poppies are from crepe or tissue paper with black button or pompom centres. You could just use black paper centres too. With the little ones, I did help them with the gluing, or if you want to get on display quickly- be ready with a hot glue gun as they cut and form the layered petal flowers.

Red cut paper poppies on green coloured paddlepop sticks or pipecleaners. These can be glued on or just a bit of tape on the back. You can stand these up in Styrofoam packaging or even padded cardboard packaging by stabbing first with a pair of closed scissors before inserting the stem.

This poppy field is crayon and watercolour resist paintings. Recognize the background poppies from the pic abice? Yep, after Anzac Day they became the poppy field for a sleeping Dorothy in a Wizard of Oz display at an art show. It was a great chance to talk about different cultural contexts- reusing our Anzac poppy display in a new way to create a different meaning.

 Torn paper poppy collage. Using scrunched tissue paper and red and green paper, students explored the symbolic colour and shape of the red poppy. You’ll just need lots of paper and a glue sticks for this one.

 Black sharpie and Bingo dabber poppy painting. Draw the poppy first as a simple instructional. A circle with spots for the middle of the poppy- lines traveling out from the circle, joined up as petals, a wavy stem with lines for the hairy filament found on poppies. Add colour with red and green bingo dabbers. These ones are from Big W and come in a 4 pack with red, yellow, blue and green.

Teach the concept of Foreground, Middle ground and Background using a field of poppies.

Separate the page into 4 strips.
The top strip has a half circle sun and triangle mountains. This is the background.

The bottom strip has large close-up large poppies with lots of detail. This is the foreground.

The middle strips have poppies getting smaller and less detailed as they move up the page and you guessed it, these are the middle ground. You can do this as an independent drawing project or as collaborative collagé, painting or printing project for display. One year I printed on calico fabric with wine corks, but large display paper would work too as long as it’s thick enough to hold the paint.

For tuning in younger students to understanding Anzac Day have a look at the mentor text Lest We Forget by Kerry Brown available here

Here’s a Read Aloud version on Youtube

And I just found this beautiful animation on the BBC YouTube channel showing war from an animal’s perspective and the poppies growing after the battles end. A great tune in to discuss the symbolism of the Red Poppy.

ANZAC Sunset Silhouettes work really well for Grade 3 to 6 and you’re ticking off those art essential learnings too, I have silhouette and tonal colour in my essential learnings scope and sequence. It’s a simple cut paper silhouette to use as a stencil. All you need is black paper, some scissors and blutack, along with oil or dry pastels in sunset colours. Silhouettes can be tricky, so I use some photocopy images of silhouetted soldiers for those who need them. This also looks great with Crosses and Simpson and his donkey if you want some variation and image choice. Just make sure they work the pastel from the stencil out to the edge of the page to get a nice sharp edge.   

Explore the concept of positive and negative space with these striking red and black cut paper poppies.

A great way to introduce technical drawing from Grade 5 and 6 up is this Anzac badge design. This started with a protractor to mark the even points for ruling the sunburst. Some students really got into the ANZAC lettering as well as an extension. Once they got the sunburst they let loose with creative ideas for the colour, shading and design. This is just one example.  

ANZAC Tent and Pyramid- Paper Sculpting. Before heading to Gallipoli the Anzacs spent months in Egypt. Create a tent city as a class with white paper tents and some larger paper pyramids.  Simple but very effective all on display. Grab some sand from the sandpit to make a desert while you’re at it, maybe a pop up camel or two. Claire Saxby’s book Meet the Anzacs is a great mentor text for this Anzac history for older primary students and connects well to the Anzacs time in Egypt. There are lots of instructional videos and templates on how to make paper pyramids available.

Here’s a Read Aloud of it on YouTube

And an engaging interview with the author cut with some historical footage.

Did you know over 1000 ANZAC soldiers in WWI were Aboriginal Australians? Visit this blog at Songlines for an interesting and accessible Indigenous perspective to find out more about how to connect to these stories. This is the picture book she references in her blog and a Read aloud version on YouTube.

Finally, if you have a rosemary bush at home or the school. A sprig of rosemary worn on the lapel is a symbol of remembrance. It grows wild on the peninsula in Gallipoli, Turkey where the original ANZACS fought in WWI. In ancient times it’s aroma was believed to help with memory and Greek scholars wore sprigs in the hair. It’s also a lovely spiky plant to do some observational drawing with, or dip it in ink to become a natural paintbrush.

Hope this has given you lots of ideas for how to explore Anzac Day in your Art room and classrooms this year. If you enjoyed the post I’d love you to subscribe, feel free to share this post and tag me @empowermooreart if you end up using any of the project ideas, I’d love to see how they turn out. Xx Emily