iAppreciate

While I haven’t made use of this idea this year (being in the library and all), I still think that it is an idea worth sharing.

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For Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, it can sometimes be a challenge to find a craft or gift idea that elicits enthusiasm in the students (especially if you teach older students). This idea is guaranteed to be one that kids will love and parents will enjoy for many years to come. (And, I mean, legitimately enjoy. Not like how my dad enjoys his best dad ever thug life sized necklace on yarn or my mom enjoys her symbolic rock family with oversized googly eyes.)
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Have your class practise reciting a poem about families, love or the importance of caring. Once they have mastered that, film their recitation. Each student should then prepare their own piece that they would like to say to their parents. It can be in the form of a poem, speech or song that they would like to sing on camera. One at a time, the students will be filmed performing their original piece.

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Next, it is off to the editing room! iMovie is an example of a video editing program that you can use to splice the bits of the video together to create individual montages for each student. Many of the students may even be able to do this step for themselves (little geniuses!). Each child’s video will begin with the poem read by the whole class and then move on to the portion created by the parents’ own child. These videos can be emailed to parents or burned onto DVDs and sent to the parents as a video reminder of the love and appreciation that their children have for them.