Host a Mother's Day Portrait Contest

Celebrate your mother or grandmother with a Mother's Day Portrait Contest for the whole family. This Mother's Day activity is entertaining as well as provides instant home-made gifts for your mom. You can also host a Mother's Day portrait contest for a community-wide celebration the Saturday before Mother's Day Sunday.

For a family celebration, invite your mother or grandmother to sit in a place of honor at the front of the room. Provide a comfortable chair and use fun artsy props to set the theme. You might want to drape your mother in a fun cloth like a Greek goddess or a robe like a queen.

Set up easels in a semi-circle around the mom for each child and grandchild to have his or her own work area. Dad should participate in the portrait contest too with his own easel. If easels are not available, simply place a few small tables in front of the mom with large sheets of white craft paper. Provide watercolors, washable paints, oil pastels, colored pencils, crayons or whatever other art supplies you have. For the most fun, include glue with buttons, glitter, craft feathers, scraps of cloth, and other materials. See how creative your kids can be when you let them loose with lots of options to make their art project.

Set a time limit on the Mother's Day portrait. Begin the timer and let everyone work on their own portrait. Younger children may finish quicker and be limited to less-mess materials like crayons or washable paints. Older children may want more time to really impress their mother with their hand-painted gift. Remember, mom can't move while everyone is working on her portrait. You might want to designate one person to be her assistant. Pretend to do make-up touch-ups, bring her cold drinks and fuss over her like a supermodel.

When everyone has finished their portrait of mom, present them in a gallery fashion for everyone to see. Hang the portraits in a row and pretend to have a gallery opening. Have refreshments prepared before hand to bring out. Allow your mother to move through the gallery and see her children's, grandchildren's and husband's interpretations of her beauty.

The mother gets to judge the art contest and present awards to each of her children. Be sure to give each child their own personalized award, so each child feels like the winner. Examples of good art awards for the Mother's Day portrait contest could be: Best Use of Color, Best Use of Materials, Most Life Like Portrayal, Most Creative Mother Portrait. Avoid giving a first place award. Instead, present an award based on each individual mother portrait.

Now mom has beautiful portraits of herself made by her children and her family she can display. This works well in a community Mother's Day celebration, but needs to be changed up just a tad.

Have children set up their work spaces in front of their own mothers. If a mother has two or three children they will each paint her. You will end up with a row of mothers presented and their children all working on their own portraits. Get independent judges from the community to judge the Mother's Day portraits and present awards. Display all the finished Mother's Day portraits in a public place so the local community can see them. The local library, cultural arts center or elementary schools are all great places to display the finished Mother's Day portraits.