Mother's Day Flower Craft

 

Mother's Day is this weekend and if you are still looking for a last minute craft idea - here is an easy and beautiful one! It took me a minute to gather the materials that I already had on hand, and the activity took about 10 minutes. The result is something you can frame and give to a mother or grandmother to melt their heart.

 

Materials: tempera paint, heavyweight paper, tissue paper, pom pom, popsicle stick

 

Here are the steps for your child:

 

-Paint a piece of paper with yellow paint (or whatever color your child wants)

-Paint a popsicle stick with green paint (skip this step if you already have a green popsicle stick)

-Glue the popsicle stick, vertically in the middle of the paper.

-Give your child a large piece of tissue paper to crumple up and then glue to the top of the popsicle stick

-Give your child a smaller piece of a different colored tissue paper to crumple up and then glue on top of the first tissue paper.

-Glue a pom pom in the middle of the flower on top of the tissue paper

-Glue green tissue paper for the leaves at the bottom of the popsicle stick

 

For a beautiful frame that fits 3 dimensional craft projects like this, check out this amazing company that I am affiliated with. All you do is slide the artwork right in. This would make such a wonderful gift, or a great way to display your child's artwork in their room.

 

Free Book Printable for Mother's Day

 

As you may know I have been creating a lot of book printables lately, specifically Board Book Printables for Toddlers. I wanted to make an activity that we can do for Mother's Day to go along with the classic book "Are You My Mother?" by P.D. Eastman. This is a cute story about a baby bird who, in search for his mother, goes around asking several different animals, including a cat, hen, dog and cow, if they are his mother. You can read this book and then do this matching printable activity with your toddler or preschooler.

 

It features 10 different mother/baby pairs of animals. It is a great way to teach your child how to visually recognize animals, the names of both baby and adult animals, and it is also a great visual discrimination exercise.

 

Page 1                                              Page 2 - cut out page

 

 

For toddlers I recommend that you laminate both pages, cut out the pieces from the second page and attach them with velcro. This gives you a nice reusable activity that your child can do over and over again. For preschoolers or children learning to use scissors, you can let them cut out the pieces from the second page and glue them to the first page.

 

Funny story - as I was doing this activity with my older daughter she asked me where the daddy animals are. Yeah, she's a daddy's girl.

 

Download your Free Printable Mother & Baby Animal Matching Activity

 (Note: the preview in Google Drive makes the images look weird but once you download it or print it the image quality is fine)

Easy Mother's Day Pop-Up Card

Every time I open up a card or book and see that it has pop-ups, I feel a little happier. And Mother's Day is all about making moms happy. So here is a little tutorial on how to make an easy pop-up card with your toddler or preschooler - it really is easier than you think! This is a nice craft that even Daddies can do with their kids (hint hint). I also included some (optional) printable clipart that you can use to finish off the card, but you can easily use other craft supplies like tissue paper, stickers, etc. Just remember that whatever is inside the card should be relatively thin so that it can actually close.

Step 1:

Have your child create 2 paintings on a heavyweight type of paper. Then let the paintings dry completely.

Step 2:

Choose which painting will be seen on the outside of the card - fold in half with the painted part on the outside. (ours was the purple one) The other painting will be on the inside of the card - fold in half with the painted part on the inside. (ours was the greenish one) You now have 2 cards. You will place one inside the other as I show in the picture, but not yet - first we have to make the pop-outs in the middle.

 

 

Step 3:

Take the "inside" painting (the greenish one) and make 4 short cuts (about 1/3 of the width of the paper) along the folded edge. I drew 4 lines on the picture below to show you more clearly.

 

 

Then press in the little strips of paper so that they "pop" out from the inside of the card. Fold along the edges of the pop-out parts so that they retain their shape. You now have 2 pop-out parts but if you prefer you can just do 1 large pop-out in the middle by making 2 cuts instead of 4.

 

 

Step 4:

Put glue on the non-painted sides of the 2 cards and glue them together. Make sure you put a lot of glue around the edges and corners. You can then close the card and set it underneath a pile of books for 30 minutes to make sure it stays glued together nicely.

 

And that's it! We now have a pop-up card! Keep reading for the decorating instructions.

 

Step 5: Decorate!

 

Have your child decorate the outside of the card with whatever you have on hand, stickers, glitter, or you can use some of the free clipart I have. We decided to keep it simple and just glue a little heart that says "mom".

 

 

Step 6: Now that the outside is decorated we can glue the things that we want to pop-up on the inside. We chose two flowers from my clipart and glued them to the pieces that pop out.

 

 

 

Then we cut slits in the "grass" and glued it to the bottom of the flowers.

 

 

We called it "finished" after this because I really didn't want to cover too much of her beautiful paintings. If your child can write, they can use a sharpie or marker to write on top of the painting. Here is our finished card - inside and outside.

 

 

You can download the Free Clipart Here