Mother's Day Gift Ideas

What do you have your class do for Mother's Day?

How about making a gift book using the poem If You Give a Mom a Muffin, patterned after the Laura Numeroff books. 

We read the whole poem, then work on two pages a day so it doesn't get overwhelming. We brainstorm ideas for each page and I draw one of them using the document camera. I encourage the students to use their own creativity but those who find drawing intimidating are comforted to have my model.

I include drawing ideas for each page in the download but they often come up with their hilarious ideas.

Mom is still asleep so her eyes are closed.

The gift bags are personalized, too!

This student knew tried to replicate her mom's pillowcase!

I buy the muffins from Costco but some buyers tell me they have the students make those, too. 

I've also thought about adding Starbucks Via packets. 

The hardest part for the students is picking which muffin flavor their mom would like best.

 I have had students admit to picking their favorite flavor in hopes Mom will share!

I also include alternative wording using Aunt, Grandma, and cocoa.

You can get all my directions and templates in my store by clicking HERE.

Mother's Day updated!

So I had a sweet follower ask very nicely if I could add some alternative pages to my Mother's Day Gift Ideas packet. Seems there are certain areas of the country that coffee is taboo so she was hoping the coffee could be changed to cocoa in the If You Give a Mom a Muffin booklet. {Note to self: never move wherever that is!}  I thought that wouldn't be too hard so I agreed. {I have posted all about how I do this project with my kiddos here and here.}

 HA, I should have know better! 

This file is old and it seems that the old version of Word doesn't play nicely with the new version I have. So after fighting it for awhile I remade the whole thing in PowerPoint (my new love.) Of course, I had to use some new cuter frames. Then I got ambitious and tried my hand at making my own muffin clip art for the cover...we have an ink shortage and my students love to color.

Since I had so many pictures for the illustration ideas I had to reduce the file size, but that made the frames blurry. Grrr...

I figured a work around that but then the pdf would print with extra white space which made the pages not perfectly aligned when you cut them in half.... ARG!!!!!! Isn't technology supposed to simplify your life? I guess some of it is me being very particular but darn it, after all the time I spend making something I want it to look like I intended when it prints out!!

After much searching on Google I FINALLY figured out how to fix this annoying problem once and for all! I danced around the house chanting, " I did it, I'm awesome, I fixed it..." My 5th just laughed at me. My 7th grader waited until I stopped my strutting and then said with a straight face, "How did that go again?" Wise guy!

Anyways....the point of this long story is....I have revised my packet so if you already own it you can go download the update for free.  If you don't have a plan for a Mother's Day gift yet, you can check it out here. I think making their mom in bed might be their favorite part...maybe I'll take a poll this year to see if I am right.

They are always SO proud to take this gift home. It is adorable to watch them decide which flavor of muffin they think their mom would like the best. I've even had some admit they are really hoping their mom will share the muffin with them! LOL, gotta love first graders!

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Little Bear Freebie

First, I want to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who bought from my TpT store during the big sale. I really appreciate it and I hope you found something useful. As a small thank you, I put together some activities I did with my class this week while we read Little Bear.

You can download them {here.}We have a class set of books so we read one story a day and then I picked out a skill I wanted to review.
Here is an example of a flow map my students completed for Birthday Soup.

 My students were SOOO excited to give their moms the If You Give A Mom a Muffin booklets that I doubt many will be able to wait until tomorrow. I already had one sweet mom email me a thank you.
I forgot to take more pictures of their precious drawings in the booklets but I did grab a few of their bags.

This cutie said her mom was just waking up so she only has one eye open. How adorable is that?

 And a few knew just what their mom's pillowcase looked like so they HAD to match it..

 I hope you had a lovely Teacher Appreciation Week. Our PTA is wonderful! Look what they did:
Monday: Breakfast provided
Tuesday: Students each bring a flower to school. Vase provided by the PTA. I forgot to take pictures but I had so many incredible, unique flowers I had to get a second vase out and they still barely fit.
Wednesday: Student bring a homemade card or other creation. One of my sweeties wrote a cute poem all by herself!
Thursday: Raffle prizes like Starbucks gift cards, dinner certificates, etc.
Friday: Lunch provided by the PTA: Taco salad and desserts!

A bunch of 5th graders that I had taught as 3rd graders popped into my room this week to deliver thank you letters they did as a computer assignment. This one says..

Thank you for being an awesome teacher for me! You rock! Hope you never leave this school. If you do, I will be sad. And other kids will not be able to meet you and see how great a teacher you are. You taught me to listen and be strong. Thank you!

The others were just as sweet, remembering fun things we had done together or saying that I always have a smile on my face. Those images are from this blog so it looks like my secret blogging life may be outed to more than just the teachers at my school now....

Alrighty, I need to run to baseball games but I haven't had many comments lately so I'd love to hear from you! Did you feel appreciated this week? Do you read Little Bear? Give me something to read as I watch warm-up please! :-)

Mother's Day Drawing

I had a request from someone using my Mother's Day booklet to help with drawing ideas.  I snapped some pictures of the one I made with my class last year and added them to the pdf so you can download the revision if you already have your copy.

We read the whole poem, then work on two pages a day so it doesn't get overwhelming. We brainstorm ideas for each page and I draw one of them using the document camera. I encourage the students to use their own creativity but those who find drawing intimidating are comforted to have my model.

The kids' drawing is always much cuter than mine. This one cracked me up last year.

I follow the same procedure with the bag drawing. This sweetie had the good idea to draw her mom's eyes closed.

Hope these pictures are helpful! 

If you don't have a Mother's Day gift idea yet you can get this one {HERE.}

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all my bloggie friends! 

I am still full from the fantastic homemade brunch of fruit crepes that my husband and two boys made for me!

I wanted to share a few pics of our Mother's Day project. The students really got into it and did a terrific job. 

I added a little binding to make it look a little more like a book.

 We went page by page to discuss ideas for drawing. I also drew some simple examples for the less confident but I was pleased how many students really used their own creativity.

I took a picture of each student about to eat the muffin for page 9 but this guy cracked me up by making this face instead!

Then we made the bags and I let them decide if they wanted googly eyes or not. This girl purposely made her mom's hair messy since she was in bed. :-)

I bought a variety of Costco muffins and let the students choose. One girl told me she picked a chocolate muffin because she knew her mom would split it with her. Now that is planning ahead!

The kids were so excited to bring them home on Friday. One sweetie confided that he just didn't know if he was going to be able to wait until Sunday to give it to his Mom!

In other news, I pick up my fixed computer tomorrow but alas, they were not able to get any data off. Thank you to all of you who offered to send me things. It turns out my blogging obsession has helped because l have copies in my Google Docs and Scribd accounts (at least the pdf.)

My job today is to try and make a movie for Open House on Tuesday. My husband thinks he can get the images off of blogger that I thought were lost so we'll see how that goes.


I am getting lots of hugs from my kids and I hope you are, too!

Mother's Day Gift Idea

Have you seen the poem "If You Give a Mom a Muffin" floating around the internet? I think it is really cute and wanted to do something with it so I made it into a booklet for my students to illustrate.

I will take a picture of them about to eat a muffin for them to glue in.  {This is my son, Quinn.}

I thought I would buy muffins and Starbucks VIAs (instant coffee that is actually not bad)

and have students put them in a bag with the poem "Breakfast in Bed." 

And we will decorate the bags like this:

You can get download these printables and directions in my TPT store. The version there does not have 1st grade 2011 on the cover.