How Kindergarten Teachers Celebrate Mother’s Day (Without Forcing It on Every Family)
On the Tuesday before Mother’s Day, our kindergarten classroom smelled like acrylic paint and damp potting soil. The children were hunched over small clay pots, sticking on foam flowers and glittery stems with the kind of serious concentration that usually only happens during snack time. A few kids were already finished and had moved on to decorating the cardboard tray with extra hearts. I was walking between tables, pointing out not to paint the tablecloth, when Marcus looked up and said, “My mom is allergic to flowers.”
“Okay,” I said. “So what do you want to do with your pot?”
He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll put a pencil in it. Or a spoon.”
“That works.”
Two tables over, Elena was very quiet. She had a white pot and was painting it entirely one shade of pink, no decorations. I crouched down next to her. “Are you making that for your mom?”
She looked at me for a second too long. “I don’t have a mom,” she said. “I live with my grandma.”
I get this every year. You’d think I’d have a prepared response by now, but somehow it still stops me. “Your grandma takes care of you, right?”
She nodded.
“Then it can be for her. Or you can paint it just for you. Both are fine.”
She went back to painting. The moment passed, but it lodged itself in my mind, which is how most Mother’s Day lessons in kindergarten work. You plan one activity, and the actual teaching lives in the small adjustments you make on the spot.
Mother’s Day in kindergarten is a strange thing. It’s not a school holiday, so there’s no official curriculum. But in classrooms all over, teachers feel the pressure to do something cute. We make cards, we glue popsicle sticks into frames, we sing a song about smiling mothers and breakfast in bed. And every year, there’s at least one child who doesn’t fit the picture—because their mom works nights, because their parents are divorced, because they have two dads, because they’re being raised by an aunt or a grandparent, or because their mother has passed away. That’s not sad in itself. It’s just reality. But the way we handle it in the classroom can either make a child feel included or make them feel like they’re missing something.
I learned this the hard way a few years back. I had a little girl whose mother had recently died. We were making “I love you, Mom” picture frames, and she dutifully made one. When she got home, she handed it to her grandmother and said, “This is for you, but really it’s for my mom.” The grandmother told me about it at pickup, not angry, just tired. That’s when I started changing how we do things.
Now, the week before Mother’s Day, I send a short note home with the kids. It’s not a permission slip. It just says: “We’ll be making a gift for a special grown-up this week. If your child has a particular person they’d like to honor—a mom, grandma, aunt, foster parent, or someone else—please let us know. We’re keeping it flexible.” Some parents write back with specific names. Many don’t. But the message itself sets the tone: we’re not assuming.
The tricky part is language. You can’t erase “Mother’s Day” from the calendar, and I don’t think we should. But inside the classroom, I use phrases like “the person who takes care of you” or “your grown-up” when I’m explaining the project. If we’re singing a song, I change a few words. “Happy Mother’s Day to you” becomes “Happy special day to you.” It sounds clunky, but the kids don’t care. They’re too busy deciding between glitter glue and sequins.
You also have to be ready for the unexpected moments. Last year, during the card-making activity, a boy named Jordan announced to the whole table, “I’m making this for my dog.” A couple of kids laughed. Jordan stood his ground. “My dog sleeps with me every night.” Instead of correcting him, I said, “That’s a good idea. You can make it for whoever you want.” He made a card with a paw print on it and took it home to his dog. His mother told me later that the card was on the fridge for two weeks. Did she feel left out? No. She thought it was hilarious. But the point wasn’t the dog. The point was that Jordan got to decide what the holiday meant to him.
The actual celebration day is different. Some years, we invite parents and grandparents in for an hour. We serve store-bought cookies and fruit punch, and the kids perform the song or present their crafts. It’s always a little chaotic. There’s at least one toddler who runs through the room, one grandmother trying to film with a phone she doesn’t quite know how to use, and one mom who has to leave early for work. This year, one child’s mother was stuck at the hospital—she’s a nurse and her shift ran over. Her son did not take it well. He sat in the corner with his pot, refusing to participate.
That’s the real work. Not the project, but the managing of disappointment. A five-year-old’s understanding of time is limited. “Mom is late” and “Mom is gone forever” can feel the same in a moment. So we talked about it. I sat down next to him and said, “Your mom wanted to be here. She sent you a picture on my phone. Look.” And I showed him a photo his mom had texted earlier, holding up a coffee cup in the hospital break room. He looked at it for a while. Then he said, “She’s wearing her work clothes.” I said, “She is. She still thinks about you.” He eventually joined the group for cookies.
The thing is, the goal of Mother’s Day in kindergarten isn’t really to celebrate a specific holiday. It’s to give children a way to express love and gratitude toward the people who care for them. That might be a mom who comes to school and cries when her daughter hands over a painted pot. It might also be a dad who gets a card that says “Happy Mother’s Day” because his daughter decided he should get one. It might be a grandmother who has done this job for years. And yes, it might be a dog.
I’ve stopped being surprised by who the kids choose. Last week, a boy made his card for his bus driver, because she waves at him every morning. His mother told me she felt a little jealous, but also relieved: at least he understands gratitude. That’s what we’re actually teaching. Not that mothers are the only ones who deserve appreciation, but that everyone deserves appreciation, and that a holiday is just a friendly excuse to practice it.
At the end of the day, when the last pot has been wrapped in cellophane and the last parent has said goodbye, my classroom looks like a craft store exploded. There’s dried glue on the tables, glitter in places I’ll probably find in June, and a faint smell of cheap paint. The kids go home with their creations, some carefully carried, some shoved into backpacks, some forgotten on the floor and retrieved by me. Tomorrow, the pots will sit on windowsills and kitchen counters, holding pens and spoons and maybe finding a good home. Some will be loved, some will be admired for a day and then recycled, and some will be regifted to a dog.
That’s okay. The celebration isn’t really about the object. It’s about the moment when a child realizes that they have someone to make something for—and that they get to decide who that is. We’ll do it all again next year, and there will be a new clay-pot smell, and a new set of complications. I’m already thinking about how to handle the kid who paints his pot black because his favorite color is black and his mom is fine with that. It’ll be fine. It usually is.
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