For Mother's Day, a fun story to read to your class is the book called "Five Minutes Peace", about a mother elephant who only wants to have five minute's of peace and quiet from her energetic children by taking a bath, (of course, her children have other plans!).

The Book

It opens up the conversation about how Moms need a rest sometimes (just like everybody else). I asked them "What can YOU do to help Mom relax?". The children enjoyed coming up with ways that they can help out their mom around the house - and nice things they can do for mom on Mother's Day. It was also funny to hear about how they think their mom relaxes ... "Mommy likes to relax doing the laundry"!

The Gift

To go with this story, children can make bath salts for their own mom (or grandma, or other special lady). Give each child a ziploc baggie, and allow them to scoop in 1 cup of Epsom salt. I had the children each smell the salt before we added the fragrance oil, asking them questions like "what does it smell like?", "does it smell good or bad?", "would you want to put this into your bath water?". Then help them add 2 drops of fragrance oil and 2 drops of colorant (both the oil and soap colorant can be found at local craft stores). I found my fragrance oil at the Dollar store, so it was very inexpensive - and I only needed less than 1 1/2 small bottles for 25 children. You only need a little bit of the oil and color - so a small bottle of each goes a long way.

Next, help the children zip up their baggie and then have them shake and mix together the oil and color in with the salt. This is great fun for the children, as they watch the color blend into the salt. We opened our bags again to take a new "sniff" to see if we liked the new smell!

The Card

Lastly, have children make cards or tags to attach to their bag of bath salts. Assist them in writing on the card who the gift is "to" and "from". You can pre-print up tags or cards with a picture of a bathtub and the following poem, if desired:

Here's a gift for Mother's Day.
I'll try my best in every way,
to give you quiet, and some rest.
Relax and soak ... you are the best!

We printed up some small rubber duck clipart for the children to color, cut and glue onto their bathtub tag (printable PDF). We also had hole punched some white circles for the children to glue on as bubbles. (I love how some duckies didn't quite make it into the tub - see picture below!)

We rolled up the baggies and used ribbon to attach the cards. The children can't wait to give these to their special lady on Mother's Day!