Looking for a unique Mother’s Day gift that your students can make? These Mother’s Day keychains using shrinky dink sheets are perfect, and so much fun to do! Keep reading for all the directions, materials, and tips, plus a FREE printable!

Students are obsessed with shrinky dink projects, and for good reason! They’re fun, easy, creative, and ADORABLE! Just look at these fully customizable keychains for Mother’s Day! They make the perfect gift for all the different types of “mom” in your students’ lives! We have all the tips, directions, and your FREE printable for these keychains below!

This activity goes well with these Simply Kinder resources:

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Other Mother’s Day Activities:

• Shrinky Dink Keepsake Craft
• Mother’s Day Craft
• Frame with Freebies
• Mother’s Day Activities
• Bookmark Gifts
• Mother’s Day Flyer
• Read Aloud Books

Getting Started

What you’ll need:

• Shrinky Dink Paper
• Keychains
• Hole Punch
• Colored Pencils
• Scissors
• Permanent Marker
• Printer
• Oven
• Free Printable PDF (Grab at bottom of email!)

You’ll want to have your materials ready for the students to start working! We got a bundle deal on Amazon of the shrink dink paper, hole punch, scissors, and keychains which worked really well. Here is a similar one that comes with 40 different keychains (20 standard and 20 on the colored hook rope):

If you already have the scissors, hole punch, and colored pencils, you can grab just the paper and keychains! For example, this one comes with 20 sheets of paper and 125 keychains, which leaves plenty of extras for a Father’s Day keychain!

Differentiation:

After you download and print the free printable on the shrink dink paper, you can cut them out so they’re ready for the students to choose from! *TIP* Make sure the ink prints on the more frosted side, and not the smooth, shiny side! One page of the printable says “Mom” with a space in the middle for students to draw a picture of their mom (or draw a heart.) The other is a heart in the middle, so students can choose to draw themselves and their Mom, or any other person they’d like to celebrate! Another idea is to have a picture of their loved one on one side of the heart, and something they love on the other, like pizza or a book!

How To Make Mother’s Day Keychains

Here’s how we made these Mother’s Day keychains:

• Have the students color in their keychains on the frosted/rough side. *TIP* Use colored pencils! Markers smudge way too easily and leave it a streaky mess! They look really pretty if they’re colored all the way in, but it’s not. a necessity.
• Get each student to write their name in a permanent marker. It would be fun to add the date too, to make it more of a memorable keepsake!
• Hole punch in the middle on top.
• Bake them (see directions below!)
• Put the keychain through the hole.
• Send home as a beautiful gift! Consider using this gift bag freebie for a personalized touch to the wrapping!

Baking Shrinky Dink

The baking is the fun part, but can get a little tricky if you try to do too much at once! Each package has different directions so be sure to follow your specific product instructions. Here is what ours required:

• Preheat oven to 320 degrees. (Some other packages say 325!)
• Place on a baking sheet. We used aluminum foil over the sheet, but in the past have also done parchment paper, just the baking sheet, or a glass baking pan. All of them work well!
• The instructions say to bake for 2-3 minutes, but watch carefully! We did two batches; the first took exactly 3 minutes to be ready, and the second took almost 4. There was really no reason it should have been different!
• They will shrivel up like the top picture. Don’t take them out yet! We promise, they flatten back out!
• Once they are back to flat, take them out of the oven.
• *TIP* Place a paper plate over top as soon as they are out to flatten them even more!
• After they are cooled off, they’re ready to be turned into keychains!

Adorable Mother’s Day Keychains

Aren’t these so perfect? What’s great about them is that they can be customized to each individual student’s family! These would be great for Mom, Grandma, Aunt, Step-Mom, or any other influential loved one! Don’t forget to sign up for your free printable at the bottom of the email!

Looking for another great customizable activity to go along with these? Check out our Mother’s Day Flyer! It can be edited to say “Happy Mother’s Day” OR any other phrase if that just doesn’t fit a student’s family. They can also choose whatever name they want to fill the flyer out for. Mom, mommy, Jessica, etc.

Free Printable

We hope you enjoy making these Mother’s Day Keychains using shrinky dink paper with your students! We know everyone will love and cherish them forever.

Make sure to grab the free printable by entering your information below. You’ll unlock the freebie (even if you’re already a subscriber). Our freebie fairy will fly that over to your inbox immediately!

Please share how you’re using this freebie in the Simply Kinder Teachers Facebook Group or tag #Simplykinder on Instagram!

This post was written by Johanna, an experienced early elementary teacher who loves learning about new teaching ideas for preschool, kindergarten, and first grade!