Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!  This is a classic example of taking a project that you are already teaching in the classroom and adding a component of technology into the lesson.  For Mother's Day, my students always write an acrostic poem for their mothers as a present.  We use the following template below:

Usually, the students write their poem in their best handwriting on the template above.  I take a nice picture of each student outside, and they glue everything on a large piece of colored construction paper and add decorations with markers.  

This year, the students wrote a rough draft using the template above.  I assigned a blank Google Drawings Document through Google Classroom and allowed the students to design their poem however they wanted.  See an example of their work below:

I assigned the Google Drawing as a landscape document.  Some of the students struggled with fitting the whole poem on the page.  Next year, I will assign the project as a portrait so that the students have more room.  Even if the student did not fit the poem on the page, their project still turned out great.  I think it added a special artistic touch.  

For the finished gift, I asked the students to glue their poem along with their picture on a large sheet of colored construction paper and decorate the paper with markers.  Yes, I could have allowed the students to insert the picture into the Google Drawings Project and kept the project completely digital.  However, I wanted to allow the students to showcase their drawings which added a personal touch.  I hope this gift becomes a treasured keepsake for the mothers.