Ways to remember your loved one with children:

• Make a memory box from an old shoebox and decorate it. Then use it to keep some special keepsakes of your loved one.
• Compile a personalised photobook with photographs of loved one with each child that they can keep and look at whenever they need to. 
• Encourage child/teen to keep a journal of thoughts to help process their emotions and feelings and a place to write their special memories. 
• Have a thanksgiving/memory jar with ‘post it notes’ to write things to be thankful for in knowing our loved one or maybe share a memory. Have a time possibly at the end of the day/quiet time that you can have the children share what they have written and talk about it. 
• Construct a question/worry box/jar with ‘post it notes’ that child can put questions worries that they may have that adult can discuss generally with children at a specific time of the day whenever all family are together- e.g. after mealtime. 
• Encourage teenager to start a blog or digital photo memory board in honour of their loved one. 
• Encourage children to paint/draw pictures, of loved one or write a poem or song in memory. 
• Ask friends and relatives of the deceased to write letters/stories or memories of loved one to the children and compile a scrapbook of them as a keepsake storybook of their life. 
• Put a picture of the child and their loved one together and frame it so they put it in their bedroom.  

To help commemorate special days:

• Plant a tree/flower in your garden or at a special place that was important to your loved one.
• Talk as a family to see how everyone is feeling and what ways each child/person wants to remember the day.
• It might be important to you mark a specific day, like their birthday or anniversary of their death, to visit the grave or place of rest of your loved one and place some flowers/card/message there. 
• For some families it may be valuable to continue with some traditions as specific times of the year like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter or to make new ones – e.g. make/buy Christmas decoration to put on tree. 
• Do something special like light a commemorative candle for your loved one at mealtime and share some stories/memories of them. 
• Get the children to write messages on label tags to their loved one and attach them to a balloon and release them into the sky. 
• Make your loved one’s favourite meal or play their preferred music. 
• Put a photo of them with a special message on social media.