If you didn’t know, I’ve been out on maternity leave since March 9th. Today I saw my colleague, Hayley, post pictures of the Mother’s Day purse card she and her students made and I thought they were just adorable! I asked her if I could share it with you all. Here’s what it looks like:
The original idea (and free template!) came from here. Hayley recommended making the template out of a manila folder so that it’s sturdier. She started with these other supplies:
You could use any paper you like, but isn’t this pack of scrap paper a wonderful assortment?! You could definitely buy one giant pack of this stuff and use it for tons of other projects throughout the year!
Hayley didn’t have ribbon on hand, like the original website uses, so she made the handle out of more paper.
All it takes to assemble to two little folds of the purse template, plus glue to add the button and the handle. I’d cut a bunch of templates out of many different patterns of paper and allow students to choose which one they wanted. This is a great way to work on expressive language goals (describing, adjectives, “I want…” sentences, etc.). Depending on the level of your students, you may want to choose paper with less busy patterns (just one color per page, stripes, polka dots, etc.).
Hayley used a poem to put on the inside of her card. The poem can be downloaded for free from Adventures of Teaching, found in this blog post. Hayley shrunk the poems to be able to fit in the card.
The bundle from Adventures of Teaching provides many different options for the inside of your card. Depending on the level of yours students, you could use the other parts of that bundle for the inside of you card. One would be good for answering “why” questions.
The finished project is super cute and could be used with a variety of ages and levels for expressive and receptive language goals. I’m sure you could even work in some articulation if you tried!
One of the reasons I enjoy working where I do is that we have a relatively large speech department in our small building – 12 SLPs in a rather small special education preschool. This allows lots of collaboration and support with other SLPs and they’re right next door to me! We pass each other in the hall every half hour and are able to ask questions and share ideas easily. In my former elementary school, I was the only full time SLP working with one other part time SLP who was only there a few days per week. This model certainly has its benefits!
Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there! I hope some of you can use this adorable project with your students!
