Five Mother's Day Craft Ideas for Children of All Ages

Mother's Day is fast approaching but there is still time to be creative and have fun doing it. The following five ideas can all be done by children of any age, with a little help from an adult, and are sure to create wonderful memories for Mom.

One: Create a menu for mom for a meal of your choice. Decide which meal of the day mom enjoys most, breakfast, brunch, lunch, or dinner and create a menu for her. Think of choices for the menu that will be relatively easy for a child to create, with a little supervision and assistance from an adult, such as pancakes, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, or maybe a nice fruit salad. The key here is to allow the child to do as much of the work as possible. Let mom choose which items she wants, get in the kitchen and start cooking. You can present the meal to mom on a tray so she can eat in bed (if it is breakfast) or set the table very nicely, put a table cloth on and maybe even putting a little bouquet of flowers on it as a centerpiece (this is the one day of the year that dandelions are a perfectly acceptable choice). If dinner is the meal of choice you can even have the child place candles on the table and the adult can light them. A menu is a unique and fun way to spoil mom for Mother's Day this year.

Two: Create a huge banner or sign on poster board or poster paper that says something appropriate, such as, "We Love You Mom!" or "Happy Mother's Day." Let the kids go all out and use construction paper, glitter, puff paint, etc. You can do construction paper cutouts of the children's hands with a message written in them for mom, glue photographs of the family on it in a collage or different shapes, make fancy cut-out or drawn letters, etc. The more creative the better. Because the banner or sign will be large and need time to dry, this project must be started a few days early and it is a good idea to have a place to hide it so mom doesn't see the surprise early. Hang the finished project in the house or on the front porch as a big surprise for mom. Make sure to take a picture of mom with the project so she will have it for always.

Three: Create a CD for Mom. You can choose a mix of her favorite songs from her own collection, get songs that she loved as a kid from her parents collections, get help from an adult downloading new songs she likes, or create a mix of all of the above. Then you can create a personalized CD cover and maybe even a label (use a kit specifically for labels if doing so to ensure the CD player is not compromised). If mom likes famous speeches, maybe you can create a CD of yourself and members of the family reciting famous speeches onto the tape. Or if she likes certain poems, you could recite those and burn them to disc. The ideas for this project are as endless as your imagination.

Four: Make and "I Will Do It" bucket. Take a children's plastic beach bucket, an old coffee can, a milk jug with the top half cut off, or any container that will work for this project and decorate it. You can use contact paper, construction paper, gift wrap, markers, paint, crayons, etc. You can write something on it about Mother's Day or note that you love mom, etc. Inside of the container put pieces of paper that you have folded in half with things you will do for mom when she pulls out the paper. Tell her it is a Sunday Jar (she gets to pull out one paper each Sunday for a month) or whatever other personalized idea you have for it. Write things such as '10-minute back rub' or "Vacuum the carpet,' 'I'll cut the coupons out and organize them from the newspaper on Sunday for you,' etc. Any ideas you have that you know mom will appreciate you doing are good ones. The thing to remember is when it comes time to do the item pulled from the bucket, it has to be done with a smile. No grumbling.

Five: Create a book for mom. This can be done by taking posterboard, cardboard, or construction paper and creating the front and back. Decorate it like you know mom will like it. When the book is created, punch holes in the sides of each page and in the front and back covers that align perfectly. Make bows out of yarn to hold the book together. Make sure to number your pages. The contents of the book can be anything mom will like. If she likes word puzzles or games you can create a book of mazes, crosswords, or wordfinds, or mix them up. If she likes stories, create a story for her. If she likes pictures, get help from an adult on finding pictures that can be cut up to create a personalized story for her. Have an adult laminate the pages (not games because she won't be able to write on the lamination) for an extra special touch.

One of the great things about moms is that their favorite presents are the ones their children make for them. These are some really good ideas to get you started on creating a Mother's Day gift your mom is really going to love.