Mother's Day Card

If you are a current mom, avert your eyes, or you might ruin the surprise. :) 

I don't know about any of you but it feels like May snuck up on us like a ninja! I can't believe school is almost out and that mother's day is only 5 days away! If you are looking for a card for a special mom in your life, look no further. 

Here is an adorable card for you to make for mom or Grandma for mother's day. It is simple and you can print it for free. Simply add who it's to, from, and add some paper pieces. 

To make ours, we cut 1/2 inch strips of construction paper. Then the kids cut and glued squares in the heart and on the bottom of the cover. They wrote who it was to and from. Then I tied of off with a ribbon.

The idea isn't originally mine. It came from an amazing preschool one town over - Brilliant Beginnings. I thought it might help to provide the page we use to make these. All you have to worry about is printing, cutting, and gluing. 

Click here to print out your own card. After printing, cut 2 inches off of the bottom. 

When you click on the link, there are a lot of ads on the page. You want to click the small grey download button right beneath the box that says view document. You will need to sign in to download the paper. You can sign up for a free 4shared account or use your social media outlet to download. Please leave a message below if you have any problems or questions. 

Happy Mother's Day to all you amazing moms who do so much and don't get nearly enough thanks.

Mother's Day Thumb Print Key Chains

 If you are looking for a cute Mother's Day gift that your moms will actually use, look no further. We actually made these for our moms as a Christmas gift so I have no reservations about posting this before Mother's Day. I don't know if you've noticed, but posting holiday activities before the holiday starts is definitely an area of improvement for me. :) There are many, many other areas of improvement, but we won't go into that right now.

   Anyway, these adorable key chains are super easy, super cute, and super usable. 

We used a tutorial from another blog that I cannot find for the life of me, so if I used your tutorial and you are reading this, please leave me a comment.

   These are very easy, but need to be done ahead of time to leave time for the paint to dry. 

Here's What You Need:

• Baking Clay (We used Sculpey brand from Walmart) 
• Heart cookie cutter (or you can free hand the heart shape)
• Toothpick
• Large Jump Ring (pliers for opening and closing the ring)
• Key Chain
• Paint (We used a metalic paint to give our hearts some shimmer)

Here's What You Do:

1. Roll out your dough to about 1/4 inch thickness.
2. Cut out a heart shape bigger than the thumb prints you are using.
3. Use toothpick to make a hole for the jump ring in the top left corner of the heart.
4. Use your child's thumb to make a heart print by tilting it to the left, then right, with overlap at the bottom. 
5. 
6. If wanted, etch the child's name and date on the back with the toothpick.
7. Bake in oven according to the package directions. 
8. Paint using two layers of paint. 
9. Pull apart the jump ring with pliers and put it through the whole. Then squeeze it back together
10. Attach the key ring and there you go! 

A sweet Mother's Day gift that your moms won't throw away once the holiday is over. 

Mother's Day Card

If you are a current mom, skip this post unless you want to ruin the surprise. : )

Are they gone? Okay, good. Here are the cards we made for mother's day this year. 

The outside had this poem on it:

Sometimes you get discouraged
Because I am so small
And always leave my fingerprints
On furniture and walls.

But every day I'm growing -
I'll be grown some day
And all those tiny handprints
Will surely fade away.

So here's a little handprint
Just so you can recall
Exactly how my fingers looked
When I was very small.

The inside had this hand print cut out on it. If you fold a paper in half and trace it so that the thumb and first finger are on the fold, it will make this heart shape between the fingers.

We also made a mother's day chocolate bar wrapper cover to cover a large chocolate bar to give to our moms as well. 

Thanks to all you great moms out there. You are the best! Happy Mother's Day!

Art Hanger

All year long, we have been sending the kids home with fun art and now there is a place to put it! We made these art hangers for our mothers for Mother's Day.

Here's What you need:

• 6 popsicle sticks (skinny or fat or a combination of the two)
  
• Hot glue gun
• Markers
• Black Yarn
• Giraffe head cut out
• 2 Mini clothes pins (You can find them at Walmart or at craft stores.)
  

Here's What You Do:

1. Color the popsicle sticks orange and add big brown spots. Color "hoofs" on the bottom of 4 of the sticks.
2. Color and cut out a picture of a giraffe head.
   
3. Use the hot glue gun to glue the 4 legs and a neck to the back of one of the sticks.
   
4. Glue the head at the top of the neck.
5. Glue a clothes pin on each of the outer legs. (The inner two don't need one.)
6. Cut a length of string and tie a knot in each end. Glue it between the legs to act as a hanger.
7. Braid three short lengths of yarn and knot each end. Glue to the end of the body as a tail.
   

Puzzle Piece Hearts

We made our moms puzzle piece heart pins for Valentine's Day.


I got the idea from Family Fun Magazine and then we tweaked it a little bit. We made the project two different ways: The first time we made it, I cut out card stock hearts and then cut out the middle so that it would look like the picture on the website.
But after we tried it, the card stock wasn't sturdy enough for the kids to take it home before it dried. So the next time we tried it, I cut out hearts with card stock and glued them to cardboard, but I didn't cut out the middle so they look like the pictures that are above. The next time we do it, I think I will use the cardboard and the card stock and cut out the middle because once they dried, they were very cute. Okay, enough rambling, here's the project:

Here's What You Need:
Red spray paint
20-25 puzzle pieces per heart
white glue
pin backing (we used the kind that are self adhesive)
cardboard
red card stock

Here's What We Did:

1. Take out all of the edge pieces of the puzzle pieces and spray paint red. (You could also spray paint it after the pieces are glued together.)
2. Cut out heart shapes from the red card stock and glue to the cardboard.
3. Use exacto knife to cut out the middle of the hearts leaving a thin heart outline.
4. Glue red puzzle pieces onto heart shape with white glue.
5. When dry, put pin backing on the back.

If you want to, you could attach it to a valentine with sentiments like I'm going to pieces over you or you'll always have a piece of my heart.

There are a lot of variations to this project. Instead of a pin, you could add a magnet, or you could add a sting to use it as a Christmas ornament. It could also be a cute picture frame.