This is a busy week for teachers of infant care programs through about fifth grade. No, there is not a big standardized No Child Left Behind consolidation test being administered. It is the week before Mother’s Day and it’s time to help children create tokens of love and respect for their mothers.

I’m not sure why, but school-made Mother’s Day, May Day, Valentine’s, and other holiday gifts and greetings seem to stop somewhere around fifth or sixth grade. Up until those grades, teachers decide on an appropriate gift, purchase materials and turn their classrooms into craft workshops. For the naturally crafty teacher, this is relatively easy. For the craft-impaired, it brings anxiety, endless hours of surfing the Internet and searching the aisles of the local craft stores.

Some teachers have favorite Mother’s Day projects that they do every year. There is the handprint with any number of versions of this poem:

My Handprints

There used to be so many

Of my finger prints to see

On furniture and walls and things

From sticky, grubby me.

But if you stop and think awhile

You’ll see I’m growing fast

These little moments disappear

You can’t bring back the past.

So here is a small reminder

To keep, not throw away

Of tiny hands and how they looked

To make you smile someday.

There is also a variation with a footprint:

Footprint Poem

The pitter patter of little feet

Leave behind something dear and sweet

A precious treasure for me to keep

The memories of your little feet.

This is a cute project but involves young children with paint on their feet. And since it’s a Mother’s Day project, volunteer moms can’t help. Take a minute. Picture a room of 5-year-olds with wet paint on the bottoms of their feet. Maybe that’s why middle school teachers don’t attempt these kinds of projects – their students’ feet don’t fit the paper anymore.

Other teachers do variations on flowers, either a bouquet of tissue paper flowers or a plastic foam cup planted with marigolds. Some teachers help their students create small vases or decorate clay pots for the fauna – fake and real. Homemade jewelry is another popular Mother’s Day school-made gift. These range from pasta strung on yarn to artfully created clay pendants or beaded safety pins. Recipe holders, refrigerator magnets and framed photos are other top projects.

After the gift is made, wrapping is next. Some teachers – the crafty ones – even have their students make their own wrapping paper using fingerprinted polka-dots or stenciled designs. Others use brown or white paper lunch bags and allow students to decorate to their hearts content. Discount store tissue paper also makes good wrapping paper, sold in lots of colors and even with glitter.

The card is another part of the project and again there is a range of solutions to this issue. There are teachers who use this as an opportunity to provide a real audience for a writing project. Some have their students write letters their mothers and other classrooms compose essays or poems. The easy, stand-by poem is the acrostic. Haikus and cinquians are also good choices for expressing feelings about moms. Another writing project is a book of coupons promising to complete extra chores. This writing can be done inside a pop-up card or a shape card – heart, flowerpot, flower – or in a card decorated using recycled materials.

There is always the challenge of the child with more than one mom or no mom. In those cases, teachers are proactive and plan to have enough materials so that students with more than one mom can make a present for each one. When a student has no mom, a teacher can encourage the student to make the Mother’s Day present for a grandma, an aunt or for Dad. A few years ago, I made bath salts with my class. One of my students had no mom but did not want to give the bath salts he made to his grandmother. He said, “My dads need these to relax. They have to work hard to be dad to me.” So, the bath salts were wrapped and the card was addressed to his dads. It’s not a big deal to make situations have integrity for the student.

The week before Mother’s Day is a busy one for teachers. But it is a heartfelt one because we get to share Mother’s Day with so many wonderful people.

What was your favorite school-made Mother’s Day present? Let’s continue this conversation. E-mail me at: conversationswithateacher@gmail.com.