This is for my son's first grade teacher. So far, I've decided to make a book. Each child will have a page with a hand-drawn picture and a few words. I'm thinking about having them write one of the following:
1) Say something about the mom and make it for the baby
2) Give parental advice from a kids' perspective
3) Free-form...let them write whatever they want to say to the teacher, the baby, the dad, etc.
What do you think? Do you have any other fun ideas that we can do?
And WHAT SHOULD I PUT ON THE COVER??? I am so uncreative.
Let them choose one of the three things to write about and on the cover put a picture of the whole class with the teacher.
When I saw your caption my first thought was a baby quilt. You could have each child bring a square or rectangle in their favorite color and have the name of the child written on each square. Then have someone sew it together and put a backing on it.
With a book have the first page written by an adult that says 'Babies come from'---- and have each page be an answer from each child.
As a teacher, I LOVE the first two ideas. Both would've brought me to tears. For the cover, how about a class picture (if that's even feasible)?
Ok, we did this exact same thing for my daughter's 1st grade teacher. Just what you're doing. I made it using a scrapbook, so it was easy enough to buy cute paper and stickers for each page. And each kid did a picture and did this 'advice' thing. It was HYSTERICAL. Now I will say, if memory serves, I 'interviewed' the kids that I could get to, and had some prompts (because if you just say what is your advice, it didn't elicit the most creative responses). So say things like, "the best thing moms do for babies is...." or "what makes babies happiest is", "moms look so pretty when they", "dads help moms with babies by". You get the idea. I e-mailed the parents of the kids I couldn't get to, and gave them the list of prompts with instructions to ask their kids one of the questions and get back to me.
I'm telling you, the teacher cried her eyes out, and then all the parents were laughing and crying reading this thing. It was awesome. The key was the prompts.
That is EXACTLY what I was going to suggest... "How to be a good mom" from the kid's point of view, and i LOVE your idea about "Great things about your mom."
If I were doing the cover, I'd collage out a photo of each child, in a ring around the outside edge, and the ultrasound of the baby to be in the center or dead center in the ring, and title it
"Your Kids", and first page it: "Out of the mouths of babes..." and have every child sign it... and then end page "Thank you for being there for our children, and for only believing 50%!" and have all the parents sign it.
I like the giving advice one, I'm sure you would get some priceless answers! As far as the cover, maybe just use a picture of the class or a clip art picture of something babyish.
You could have them draw pictures of what they think the baby will look like. You have to explain all this to 1st graders, so try not to get too creative!
I would do a combo of all three and let the kids decide.
You can write
- tell the baby how you feel about your teacher / his mommy
- how you feel about your teacher having a baby.
- what you know about babies and how to take care of them, what they need, etc.
