10 Homemade Mother's Day Gifts You Can Make With the Grandkids
There’s nothing a mom loves more than a thoughtful, handmade gift from her children. And there’s nothing the grandkids love more than a craft with Nana and Papa!
Before Mother’s Day, why not marry the two and help the grandkids make a sweet, homemade gift for their mother?
If you’re not the crafty type, we’ve pulled some inspiration for you with these 10 homemade Mother’s Day gifts that you can create with your grandchildren, whether they’re toddlers or teenagers.
1. Handprint Clay Jewelry Dish
Nothing says handmade like a handprint clay jewelry dish! The grandkids will love the hands-on nature of this craft. They’ll love handing it off to their mom on Mother’s Day. OK, we’ll stop with the puns.
Seriously, though, this craft is both personal and useful – it’s one of those crafty gifts that mom will love and will actually use.
Rebecca from the blog Simple as That posted a tutorial for this dish, and here’s what you need:
- Washable paint
- Air dry clay
- X-Acto knife
- Parchment
- Rolling pin
- Glass bowl
- Cookie cutter
- Paintbrush
To make it, you start with a small ball of clay which you roll out to be a little bigger than your grandkiddo’s hand. They’ll put their hand on the clay, and you’ll trace it with a pencil so that you can cut it out with the X-Acto knife.
Then, you’ll place the clay hand shape over the bottom of a small bowl so that it’ll mold into that rounded shape. Once it’s dry (can take up to 2 days!), you can remove it and paint it your favorite color. Viola!
2. Essential Oils Spa Basket
There are a lot of fragrant plants, like lavender and eucalyptus, and their oils can be extracted for use in anything from shower gel to perfume. They claim to have health benefits that range from stress reduction to dandruff treatments.
If you’re a proponent of the all-natural lifestyle, or you simply like the clean smell of essential oils, you might consider putting together an essential oils basket.
This is a fun project to do with older grandkids as they might have an interest in making beauty and relaxation-related products. (They might even make a little extra to take with them!)
For the spa basket, you can put together items like:
- Body spray (essential oil, water, and witch hazel)
- Lavender roller bottle (Lavender essential oil, fractionated coconut oil)
- Beeswax Candle (beeswax pellets, coconut oil, candle wick, essential oil)
- Whipped body butter (coconut oil, olive oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, essential oil)
- Bath salts (epsom salt, sea salt, baking soda, lavender and frankincense essential oil)
- Lip balm (beeswax, cocoa butter, coconut oil, essential oil, lip balm tube)
You can use any essential oil mom likes. Here are some popular ones:
- Lavender
- Frankincense
- Peppermint
- Eucalyptus
- Tea Tree
- Grapefruit
- Rosemary
- Lemon
- Sweet Orange
- Patchouli
- Bergamot
- Lemongrass
It might even be fun to take the grandkids to your local vitamin store (stores like Vitamin Shoppe carry them). You can choose your favorite essential oils together!
3. Painted Flower Pots
If the grandkids are little, painting flower pots is a fun craft to do on a Saturday afternoon. They also make a great personalized Mother’s Day gift.
To do the project, all you need is a terracotta pot and acrylic paint.
If the kids are really young, you can do a guided craft, like a fingerprint butterfly.
If they’re a little older, they can go wild and paint whatever their imagination comes up with! Mom will love the keepsake – and the flowers, too!
4. Custom Mom Sign
If you’re naturally handy and creative, pass those skills on to your grandchildren with this custom “Mom” sign!
When you’re done, the sign will have small photos all across the top and the word “MOM” created using nails and yarn.
We won’t lie – it is somewhat of a labor of love, but the end result is pretty amazing.
You could get the project set up on your own time, and then invite the grandkids (pre-teens and teens would love this the most) to do the yarn work.
Lily Ardor explains on her blog how to print the letters, nail them onto the board, and string the yarn so that “Mom” is filled in. It looks complicated, but really, you’re just stringing the yarn around the nails in a wild pattern so that all the space in the middle gets filled in.
This is a handmade gift that mom will love for years to come!
5. Homemade Caramels
If you know that the mom in question has too much stuff as it is, making some treats that’ll disappear in no time is a great way to spread the love.
Plus, who doesn’t love caramel?
If you have older grandkids, you can make these caramels together from start to finish. If the grandkids are younger, you could make the caramel and save the decorating for when they arrive.
To make the caramel, you’ll need:
- 2 cups light corn syrup
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups evaporated milk
- 1 stick butter
A candy thermometer is pretty much mandatory so that you can get the mixture to exactly 240 degrees, or the soft ball stage.
You’ll combine the corn syrup and sugar in a pot over medium heat. Stir with a wooden spoon until it reaches 236 degrees. Quickly add the butter and stir until the mixture hits 240 degrees. Add the can of evaporated milk slowly – you want to keep the mixture at a boil – until you hit 226 degrees. (The mixture will cool down when you add the milk.)
Pour the caramel into a baking sheet lined with parchment and cool completely.
Cut the caramel into small squares, and you’re ready for decorating!
You can really top these with whatever you want, but Katie from Live Craft Eat shows how to dip these caramels into melted chocolate, which is pretty awesome! You can then top them with crushed pretzels, flaky salt, toffee, mini m&ms… or whatever the grandkids like!
This is a fun Mother's Day treat that everyone can enjoy.
6. Coffee Cup Candles
Candles are great, but candles in cute coffee cups are even better!
The best part is that you can melt down an old candle you already have, or you can choose what goes into the candle you’re making. You can buy organic beeswax or basic candle wax flakes – the choice is yours! You can also choose how to scent the candle, whether it be with pre-scented wax or natural essential oils.
It might sound intimidating, but all you have to do is melt the wax in a double boiler (takes about 30 minutes over medium heat), place a candle wick in your mug (stand it up using chopsticks or pencils), and pour your wax in!
If you have pre-teen or teenage granddaughters, this is a really fun project to tackle together! Plus, if you don’t have any extra coffee mugs laying around, your local thrift shop or Goodwill is a great place to look.
7. Heart-Framed Shadow Box
If your grandkids are around kindergarten age, odds are they love drawing, coloring, finger painting – all of that.
What better way to show mom the kiddos care than to frame their artwork?
They can draw whatever their hearts desire – all you need to help finish the project is their art, acrylic paint and a paint brush, a square picture frame, and a heart template (which you’ll make).
Martha Stewart instructs to remove the glass pane from the picture frame and to cut out a heart shape from a piece of paper.
Center the heart on the glass pane and trace the outer edge with paint. Fill in the rest of the outside space with paint. You may need multiple coats.
Then, put the artwork in the frame like normal, and you officially have a heart-framed shadow box.
The perfect Mother’s Day gift for young grandchildren!
8. Scrabble Coasters
Is the mom of honor a word nerd? Personalized scrabble coasters are a really fun way to gift something unique and useful.
Middle-aged grandchildren will have a blast coming up with 4-letter word combinations, and sealing them off is as easy as some super-strength glue.
If you have an old Scrabble set that’s on the outs, recycle those remaining pieces into a really fun gift that you can help the grandchildren make.
9. Fingerprint Necklace
What’s Mother’s Day without jewelry in the mix?
Even if mom seems to have every piece of jewelry a woman could need, we bet she doesn’t have a necklace that’s custom-made by her babies!
Similar to the jewelry handprint holder, this fingerprint necklace is made from clay.
You’ll need white polymer clay, a wooden skewer, a pen, a plastic lid, and some wax paper.
The Crafty Brow blog has instructions for this craft, but here’s the gist: you roll out a small ball of clay into an oval shape. You poke a hole at the top of the shape for your chain, and you take your child’s finger and press down into the bottom half to make a fingerprint.
Bake it in the oven for 15 minutes at 275 degrees, and once it’s cooled, it’s ready to be stringed. You can use any string or you can purchase a chain from your local jewelry store.
10. Floral Herb Perfume
If mom is a perfume-lover, she’ll love this DIY homemade floral herb perfume, courtesy Agnes from the blog hello, Wonderful. All you need is a spray bottle, water, herbs or flowers, and essential oils.
Ideas include lavender, lilac, and rosemary or rose and sage.
Coming up with scent combinations can be a lot of fun! Your grandchildren will have a blast coming up with their own perfume creations.
They can trim the herbs and flowers and add them to the spray bottle – about three-quarters full. Then, add several drops of your chosen essential oil (or oils) to the bottle. Fill up the rest of the way with water and shake.
These homemade perfume bottles are all-natural, so they can also double as a facial spray (also called skin mist).
If you’re going to see the grandkids before Mother’s Day, we hope you partner up with them to create one of these personalized, handmade Mother’s Day gifts! Let us know if you try any of them in the comment section below!
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