Happy Easter! Now let’s hop right on along to Mother’s Day, shall we? That is the way we do things here in the blogging world after all. Plus, I have the most adorable printable Mother’s Day cards I have been itching to share with you for weeks now.

Mother’s Day is truly just around the corner, and like always, I aim to make life easier. And these cards bring the best of both worlds! They are creativity focused, but are also easy peasy for you.

Simply choose which card cover you would like, which card interior you would like, and presto, a custom Mother’s Day card has been created!

The covers are adorable, and perfect for little hands to colour. They are all available to you with this free printable, and include:

• Adorable succulents
• A sweet Mama and baby bee
• A Mama and baby duck (complete with flower crowns)
• Simple pretty flowers
• Or text that says, “I know my Mom loves me because …”

The covers are all intentionally simple, perfect for little hands to colour. Of course, they are also perfect for bigger hands to do intricate designs should they please.

The interiors are sweet little activities that children can participate in creating. You might choose to ask your child the questions out loud or have that sweet child printing appear on the card. There is, of course, always the option to have children draw their responses, too. 

The interiors include:

• A picture of me and my Mom (which includes a sweet frame for a beautiful illustration)
• A fill in the blank poem
• All about my Mommy 
• 5 Things I Love About My Mom
• Lines for children to write their own message

This printable includes all 5 covers and all 5 interiors. You can choose to print double-sided, selecting the page numbers you wish, or you can simply print everything and glue your interior inside your card. Whatever is easiest for you and yours.

Tips for Writing Cards with Young Children

But just before I share with you the link for your free download of these Mother’s Day cards, I thought this blog post was a great time for me to share with you a few of my favorite tips for writing with little ones. The teacher in me can’t pass up the opportunity!

Talk it out first

When writing with little ones, it is a wonderful idea to chat about what your child might like to write first. Children need time to process their thoughts and think things through before knowing how to phrase things in their writing.

Narration

Once ready to print the message inside the card, your child might feel more comfortable narrating to you what to write. This is wonderful! Being able to concisely formulate what to say is a very important step in writing.

Printing the First Sound

If your child is ready to begin printing but is very new to the experience, consider writing the word but leaving off the first letter for your child to print. Have your child say the word slowly, trying to hear what the first sound is. Next, have your child try to recall what letter makes that sound. Finally, have your child print that letter at the beginning of the word. 

Phonetic Spelling

If your child has had some experience with printing, you can choose to do phonetic spelling, or copywork. I believe both have a very important role to play in developing writing skills, and I also believe that they complement each other and should be used together. Phonetic spelling involves having a child write down the sounds they hear in a word. For example, “apl” might be how a child spells “apple.” This part of writing builds confidence and allows children to see how sounds fit together and blend together to make words. 

Copywork

A second option is writing the words or sentence down on a piece of paper for your child to copy. Your child might feel most comfortable writing entirely from copywork, which is just fine! Or perhaps you write just some words down, allowing your child to try to phonetically sound out the others. Copywork not only helps children learn to spell words properly, it also gives them a chance to practice proper letter sizing and formation.

Personal Dictionary

A great option to help writing progress is to keep a personal dictionary for your child. This allows you to slowly add words to your child’s dictionary, expanding the words he or she can spell correctly and independently using this dictionary. I have a wonderful personal dictionary you can download for free right here.

Alright, now that we have a few tips and tricks for filling out those Mother’s Day cards with our little ones, let’s get them downloaded!

I hope you and yours love them. Happy Mother’s Day!

xo
Sarah