Mother's Day is right around the corner. 

As a grandparent, you're used to getting some extra love from your kids and Grandkids for holidays like Mother's Day or Father's Day, but it's also a great time to show your daughter or daughter-in-law how much you appreciate her work in raising your grandchildren. Make the holiday extra-special for her this year by helping your grandkids craft some loving gifts. Though these homemade presents will come from them, their mother will be touched by the guidance and effort that you provided in helping make the project happen.

Here are a few ideas from around the web of thoughtful, but simple, crafts that you can make with your grandkids:

1. Homemade cards
Cards make wonderful Mother's Day gifts - they give kids an outlet to be creative and tell Mom how much she means to them through their artwork and their words. They also make lovely decorations to place on the mantel or fridge. Along with that, after the day is over, cards are easy to store - since they don't take up much room and they can be simply tucked into a file or drawer for safe keeping, perfect for moms who like to save little mementos over the years.

There are many ways to make a clever card.  At the most basic level, you can just take some nice construction paper, fold it in half and write on it with markers or colored pencils. But if you are trying to jazz them up a bit more than normal, check out these ways to really make your cards pop:

• Thumbprint cards. Fold a piece of paper in half horizontally. Using a nontoxic ink pad, have your grandkids make thumb and fingerprints to make designs on the front. They can use red to make little heart shapes, green to make leaves on a tree or as suggested by craft blog Crafty Morning, you can use purple to make grapes for a "Love You Bunches" card. 
• Handprint cards. Why stop at a fingerprints when you can use the whole hand? After you fold a sheet of paper into a card, have your grandchild put heir hand in finger paint and make a print. Food, Love and Life Blog suggests using green paint to make stems and then adding flowers to the finger tips. Paint a pot at the heel of the handprint, or cut one out with construction paper and glue it on.
• Cupcake liner cards. Give cards some extra dimension by using other supplies to add a 3-D pop. The OT Toolbox recommends using cupcake liners to make flowers. Use a multi-pack of brightly colored paper cupcake lines for this project. Have your grandkid make incisions all along the edge of a liner to make petals - be sure to supervise carefully if your grandchild is young! Use construction paper to cut out a rounded shape to go in the center of the flower, and make a green stem. The kids can can make a beautiful bouquet to adorn the cover of their card. 

2. Pipe cleaner flower bouquet
This idea comes from One Little Project - make a vibrant flower bouquet that won't wilt. 

You'll need:

• Colorful pipe cleaners
• Glue
• Small flower pots or mason jars
• Sand

To make daffodils, use yellow, orange and green pipe cleaners. Take three yellow and bend them in half. Open them up again, and crisscross them over one another with the bent points at the center. Twist the middle so they are held together.

From there, take each end one at a time and roll it towards the center in a tight spiral. Once all the pieces are swirled into the core, hook a green pipe cleaner through the middle of the flower and twist to make a stem that's sturdily attached to the petals.

Next, take an orange pipe cleaner and coil it around your pinky. After it's in a tight spiral, glue one end down to the yellow petals. Repeat the whole process for as many flowers ad you'd like to make. Pour sand into a small pot or jar and stick the stems in. Decorate the surface of the sand with stones, black pipe cleaners or another covering of your choosing.

One Little Project also has instructions for making tulips and hyacinths.

3. Decorated picture frame
No matter their age, moms love photos of their kids. While simply taking a nice, new photo of her children and putting it in a frame can be a welcome gift on its own, you can make it even more personalized by helping your grandchildren decorate the frame. 

If you're looking to fully DIY, style your grandkids to get a new picture taken. Whether that means dressing them up in their Sunday best or just making sure their hair is combed while they wear their favorite casual clothes, is totally up to you. Then, using a smartphone or camera, take several shots of your kiddos posing at the park or candidly playing with their favorite toys. Find one that looks clear and print it out on photo paper at home or take to a local drugstore to be developed. 

If you're looking for something a little more polished, visit a professional photographer - just be sure you plan this well in advance, as it make take longer to get prints back.

After you have the perfect photo in hand, it's okay to get messy! Take a plain picture frame and help your grandchildren decorate it. They can write on it, paint it or try decoupage. Add some more love by helping them write a nice note to Mom on the back of the frame. 

Once your frame is dry, add the picture to it. Now you have a beautiful, memorable keepsake to give on Mother's Day.

4. Bake a sweet treat
Does the mom in this equation have a favorite baked good she loves? Or perhaps there's a special family recipe you want to teach your grandkids? You could also look online or in an old forgotten cookbook for a concoction you've never tried before. Whatever route you choose to go, making mom something sweet is a wonderful way to create a special gift with your grandkids. Decorate cupcakes or sugar cookies together to make an even more customized treat. Pack them in a decorative box or bag to give it a little extra style. Better yet, buy plain containers for your treats that the grandkids can color and decorate themselves!

5. Make a game
The best gift is one that keeps on giving. Make a family-friendly board game with your grandkids that they'll be able to use and play with mom, making new memories each time it's pulled out! 

You can try recreating any of your grandkids favorite games using poster board or fabric, such as using multi-colored felt squares to make a checker board. Or, you can try creating a brand-new game. PBS suggests making this project fun and educational by building a board game based on a child's favorite book. 

You'll need:

• Shrinky dink sheets (or buttons or other small objects to use as pieces) 
• Crayons, colored pencils or markers
• Glue
• Index cards
• Cardboard or stiff poster board
• Scissors
• Construction paper
• A recycled box, like a shirt box
• A beloved book
• Dice

Have your grandchildren pick a favorite book or book series to base the game on. Working together, brainstorm questions that can be made into trivia cards for the game, or plot-related action points that can help the pieces move around the board. 

Once your grandkids have compiled a list of questions and answers or action ideas, they can write them down on the index cards. Allow them to decorate around the words if they'd like. 

Next you can create playing pieces. Have children draw characters on the shrinky dink sheets, then follow the instructions to reduce their size. Or, for younger kids who may not have the patience for too many extra steps, use buttons or other small knickknacks to serve as game pieces.

After that you'll want to create the board. Help them plan out a landscape and glue down construction paper or other background materials onto the cardboard. Draw out a path for the game to progress through, making boxes for pieces to land in. Mark boxes with actions like pulling a question card, pulling an action card or possibly even losing a turn or skipping ahead to another space. 

If you'd like, you can all decorate a box to store all the pieces in. To play the game, everyone takes a turn rolling the dice to figure out how many spots to move up. Players then follow the instructions for the spaces they land on, until someone reaches the end. 

Create a new project of your own
Sites like Pinterest offer many interesting suggestions for DIY Mother's Day gifts. You can also browse crafting magazines or parenting blogs for fun projects to make with your grandkids. Or, if you're feeling especially ambitious, try to think of a craft project all on your own to try out together. 

Whatever you decide to do, remember to have fun and embrace possible mistakes in the process. While the goal is to make a nice gift for their moms for Mother's Day, you also want to enjoy the time you're spending with your grandchildren and the memories you are making together.