Mothering Sunday / Mother's Day

This Sunday (18th March) is Mothering Sunday (often known as Mothers Day). Mothering Sunday is celebrated in the UK on the fourth Sunday of Lent, which means that the date varies from year to year.

It is unclear when Mothering Sunday was first celebrated. Traditionally, it was a day when children, mainly daughters, who had gone to work as domestic servants were given a day off to visit their family and return to their ‘mother church’ the church in which they were baptised. Today it is a day when children give presents, flowers and cards to their mothers, women attending church services will often be presented with flowers and many youth organisations for example Scouts and Guides will have church parade services.

Craft activities are a great way to help children develop fine motor skills in a fun way. Here are some craft ideas for children to make for their mums that will encourage the development of these skills whilst making great presents. A range of left and right handed training scissors are available at Littlesheep Learning

Paper flowers
You will need: Pipe cleaners (preferably green ones or colour white ones green), coloured tissue paper, scissors and sticky tape.

How to make them:

• Cut a strip of tissue paper about 15cm long and 3cm wide and cut a ‘fringe’ (lots of downward snips) along it – this is a great activity for children just starting to learn scissor skills.
• Wrap the strip of fringed tissue paper around the end of the pipe cleaner and secure with sticky tape – this makes the centre of the flower.
• Cut out several circles (or flower shapes for children with more advanced cutting skills – right handed children should find it easier to cut it anti-clockwise and left handed children clockwise) of tissue paper - the more circles used the bigger your flower.
• Cut a small slit into the centre of the circle shapes and thread them all onto the pipe cleaner (again good for fine motor skill development) and then secure with sticky tape.
• You may want to also cut out leaf shapes and attach these.

When you’ve made your flowers you can put them on the front of a card or make a whole bouquet in different colours and put in a decorated yoghurt pot ‘vase’ or tie with a ribbon.

Flowery cards

There are several fun ways of making flower cards using fine motor skills.

• Cut out flower shapes and stems and stick them onto a card to make a collage.
• Finger paint to make the petals of flowers.
• Scrunch up coloured tissue paper into ball and stick it within a flower outline.
• Cut paper (old flower catalogues are good for this) into small pieces and stick them within a flower outline