Mother’s Day craft

Little piece of trivia for you before we start 🙂
Did you know…
In 1912, the phrases “second Sunday in May” and “Mother’s Day” were trademarked by an Anna Jarvis, a woman who, two years after her mother’s death, held a memorial to her mother and thereafter embarked upon a campaign to make “Mother’s Day” a recognized holiday. She succeeded in making this nationally recognized in the States in 1914, and created the Mother’s Day International Association. Anna was specific about the location of the apostrophe. It was to be a singular possessive, for each family to honour their mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world. Ironically though, she eventually got upset with the commercialization of Mother’s Day and she never got married or had any children. Hm.

Anyway, this is a little project that DD and I are doing for her great-grandmothers, grandmothers and grandaunts. This paper flowers idea is adapted from a friend, Leonny’s, blog. I like it because it’s simple and quick enough for a toddler to do, without expecting too much given their limited attention span.
You will need: Straws, colour paper, crayons, scissors, cellophane tape.
Using the crayons, draw out the outline of your child’s hand. Draw as many as you need.  Cut out the outline(s).

Form a cone with the cutouts with the palm portion of the shape as the tip/base of the flower and the fingers as the petals.  Glue down the tip. Secure the base to the top of a straw with cellophane tape. 

We crushed some scrap bits of paper into small balls, dropped in a dab of glue and tossed them in to make the centre of the flower. (Sorry, I couldn’t get a good shot of this step…)

The bunch of flowers ready to be given out!

N.B.  On just cellophane alone, the flowers started falling off though so we further secured them to the straw stalk by stapling them down. I think this is because we used construction paper, which has a slightly rough texture.  A smoother textured paper would probably have adhered better to the cellophane tape.

DD had tons of fun making these and she was really excited about giving them out.  She refused to put them down and was just going about with the bunch of flowers, waiting and waiting for her great grandmother and grand aunts to arrive for dinner…and running excitedly to the door to give out a flower to each as they made their way in.  She gave me one too. “Mama, for you”.  So heartwarming. So precious  🙂