Mother's Day - Something special for mom!

 If you are a current parent of a child in my preschool class, please stop reading here!  Below are photos of your Mother's Day gifts, which are supposed to be a surprise.  After you have received your gift, feel free to return to my blog and continue reading this post!

Every year my preschool classes make special Mother's Day gifts for their moms!  In the past, the 4's class has made a fingerprint flower card with a special poem on the inside.  I meant to take a picture of the example I made, but forgot.  But, basically you use one finger and a stamp pad to make a flower print on the front of a card with your finger and add a poem on the inside.  Check out the poem I used here or in the Poems tab at the top of my blog.

This year, I wanted to try something a little different!  A few years ago, when my step-daughter was 10 years old (she's 18 now), she attended a Vacation Bible School near our house (we lived in Westland then).  One of the crafts they made was a vase of flowers.  The flowers were made from wire and beads and the vase was made by re-using a small water bottle and covering it in fabric.  Below is a picture of the vase of flowers my step-daughter made:

This is a close-up of the flowers.

So, this year, I decided to modify this project a little bit and use it as our Mother's Day gift!  Instead of wire, we used green pipe cleaners to string the beads on.  And, instead of a vase, I bought some pretty ribbon (4 different kinds to choose from) on clearance at Michael's to tie around the "flower."  Each of the kids made 3 petals for their flowers.  I then twisted the 3 pipe cleaners together and tied a ribbon around them in a bow to keep them together.  The kids worked on these yesterday (Monday).  Below is a picture of one of the kids stringing the beads on the pipe cleaner:

Here are some pictures of the completed flowers!  Aren't they pretty!

I am also going to attach the same poem that I used in previous years for the fingerprint flower cards to the flowers for the kids to give to their moms for Mother's Day.

For the  3's class, we make a special hand print & poem for Mother's Day.  I found this great poem (also under the Poems tab on the top of my blog) online many years ago and decided it would be great to use for Mother's Day!  The poem is off-set to allow space for each child's hand print next to it.  I use a fun patterned paper I found at Staples, print the poem on one of the printed papers for each child, mix up some pastel paint colors that match the colors in the paper, paint each child's hand, and press it onto the paper to leave a hand print.  I tried to find the paper I bought at Staples on their website so I could post it here, but could not find it.  Amazingly, I bought a package of 100 sheets about 6 years ago, finally used it all up last year, and was able to go there yesterday and find the EXACT same paper as I bought 6 years ago.  I was surprised!  I thought for sure I would need to pick out a new print...

Here is a picture of one of the hand print poems the kids did today:

I am going to laminate each hand print poem and send them home with the 3's class kids on Thursday.  Thursday is field trip day and we are going to Domino's Farm!

I found some new blogs to link up to thanks to Homeschool Mo!  So, I am linking up with: