Mother's Day Poems

Happy Friday, everyone! Well, at least for those of us living in Asia. It’s May and the rainy season is upon us once again, which means I’ll be sporting wet shoes and a poncho for the next couple of months. It really makes me miss having a vehicle with doors and a roof, but hey, it’s just water, right?

This weekend is Mother’s Day, and coincidently, we’ve just started our poetry unit, so I thought- what better way celebrate mom than with a beautiful poem? In language arts we’ve been learning about figurative language, specifically similes and metaphors, so we read some poems that use figurative language just to get some ideas. Then, we brainstormed a list of adjectives that we use to describe our moms.

Later for art, we created a watercolor floral border to publish out poems on… I got the idea for this project here. Here’s a few snapshot of our pieces today.

Happy Mom’s Day to all you fierce females out there. Hope you have a great weekend!

Start with watercolor- be sure to leave a space for your poem!

Any color combo will do...

Once it dries, draw over it with a fine-tip permanent marker or fountain pen (0.5mm)

It's up to you how light or dark the flowers.

Add the final draft of your poem.

Voila! Mother's Day Gift, boss status.

Columbus Day Art

Yesterday was Columbus Day in America and what better way to celebrate the “discovery of the new world” than with art? Usually art falls on Fridays as a little reward for working so hard all week, but last week was our first fundraiser for Service Learning and my kids missed out on art. So, to make it up to them we did art on Monday and had a blast with this great project. I got this idea from Patty over at www.deepspacesparkle.com and it was a ton of fun and SUPER easy to teach.

I began the lesson with a brief story of Christopher Columbus and the explorers at that time just to set the scene of what it would have been like to be one of the first settlers of the new world. We had a great discussion about the challenges and fears these adventurers must have faced at that time. Then, we looked at a few drawings of Clipper Ships, or pirate ships as my kids like to call them, and studied the basic shapes that make up the outline. Once we played around with some practice drawings, we were ready for our good piece of paper… I only allow students one thick sheet of paper for a final print to reduce the waste and carelessness that can sometimes happen in art class.

Once our pencil outlines were done, we busted out the watercolors and that’s when the real fun started. I have to admit, this was a big project and one that I don’t recommend trying to finish in one sitting, but we pulled through it and they look beautiful. Here are the finished products: