Mother's Day Fractions and an Update on Mother Nature

This is truly only my second year doing mother's day projects.  Why in eleven years it never really landed on the radar, I don't know, but I can't say I don't like it now that I'm into it.  Trouble comes in when you've got to make sure you prove your craftivity has some academic merit.  Luckily for me, my teammie managed to make this one all about fractions.

Now, her project looked different from mine- she made a card that was brown for the earth, and then they planted popsicle stick stems painted green on the back and then pasted on their flowers- I went for a vase with decorated background- but the fraction part remains the same.

We used eight stems, so the students have to describe their bouquet arrangement in the form of eighths.  Three eighths of my bouquet is orange, two eights are pink, etc.  And then we wrap it all together in a bitty poem:

For this Mother's day, I've made you this bouquet:
?/8 of these flowers are {color},
?/8 of these flowers are {color},
and ?/8 of these flowers are{color},
but I put it together with my WHOLE heart.

Yay for creative teammates! We'll be pasting on the poem tomorrow. 

 I also enjoyed teaching them the artistic points as well- how to make your vase BIG as opposed to microscopic.  How to make flowers if you only want to cut a basic shape or if you want to get fancy with the layering.  The all important "a dab will do ya" lesson.  Whenever we do these projects my kids always say "How do you know how to do this?!"  Because I am OLD sweeties, I am ollllllllllld.

Here's mine- Mommy is going to love it!

 

 

My boys OWNED it, I tell you!  Here's my giant (so sweet, I could fit him in my pocket!) working hard on background wallpaper.

 

This little cherub even went bilingual on me!  And then of course the craze was copied across the room, even by my limited few who don't speak Spanish at home.

 

My resident artist, we all go to her for advice:

 

And this baby doll even cannibalized the unused scrapbooking paper for some flair.

 

Awesome sauce I say!  And, to report on how Mother Nature has not completely failed me- turns out my caterpillars were cold.  Moved their net near the computers, they are now basking in the radiation.  This guy quadrupled overnight.  Sandi- thank you for the hollyhock advice, but my stinking local nursery says they won't be getting any until the end of the month.  Hopefully these guys will be content with the warmth and not die on me.

 

 

 

And miracle of miracles! The beans sprouted over the weekend and went gangbusters.  All but four of them, anyway.  We repotted them after finding that they were way down at the bottom of the carton.  One had mad roots though, so I think it will still sprout.  The other three- ermmmm, I think those poor gardeners will be going home with a lupine or a watermelon.  *sigh*  We are loving noticing how they are all leaning toward the window for sun - as we have so little of it with our forecasted weeklong rain.  Flood date in our future, methinks...