Shower Your Teachers with Appreciation

My favorite way to spoil our teachers during Teachers Appreciation Week is to have breakfast and lunch (and dinner if I have a really go-get 'em group of parents in our class) brought into them each day. It starts off with a simple email like this:

"Good evening families! Hope you all had a restful Spring Break and delightful Easter. As you may have heard, next week is Teacher Appreciation Week, where we take a little time to show our teachers how grateful we are for the difference they make in the lives of our children. Instead of collecting money for a class gift, I love arranging for parents to bring in lunch to our teacher each day. Of course you are still welcome to make your own cards or bring in your own little gifts. But if you are interested in signing up to bring coffee and a breakfast treat, or lunch for Mrs. Miller see the opportunities below. I will give Mrs. Miller a stack of menus tomorrow and if you sign up for one of the slots, I will just forward you her order from a local lunch stop. 

Monday coffee and breakfast treat:

Monday lunch:

Tuesday lunch:

Wednesday lunch:

Thursday coffee and breakfast treat:

Thursday lunch:

Friday coffee and breakfast treat:

In years passed, I have had a big enough response to also have sign ups for dinners. If you’d like to do dinner instead of lunch just specify. Thank you SO much for your help with this. It means SO much to our teachers when all of their hard work is recognized. "

While parents are busy signing up, I drop a stack of menus by the teachers desk so that she can pick out her lunches for the week. Then after she's done and gives it back to me, I forward the specific orders along to the parents who volunteered to help. After that, it is up and running. I do send an email out each night of that week saying a special thank you to those who brought in treats and I remind the people who have signed up for the next day…just in case its slipped their minds.

Gifts for Teachers that Kids Love, Too!

There's something about opening up a gift card in front of first graders that just isn't all that exciting. BUT when the gift card comes attached to a card like this, the crowd goes wild! And the leftover candy bars that I DON'T end up using, might just be my favorite part of this tradition.

Halloween Goodie Bags for the Brain

Our school has enforced a strict policy that food is not to be part of holiday celebrations in the classroom. A cookie and a juice has always been an easy treat to bring in for special times of the year. So, for this Halloween I had to think outside of the box. I considered running to the dollar store and throwing a bunch of plastic trinkets in a bag and calling it a goodie bag. But, just last week my 1st grade daughter brought home a bag very similar to that from a birthday party she had gone to and as soon as she wasn't looking I dumped it in the trash. I don't need anymore whistles, yo-yo's, bouncy balls, rubber bracelets, etc. So instead, I came up with a goodie bag for the brain. I printed out a Halloween Wordle which is always a hit with kids, a couple pages of Halloween jokes, and a sweet Shel Silverstein poem about trick or treating.
Halloween Poem
Halloween Wordle

Halloween Jokes

Candy Bar Card Tradition

My kids have declared candy bar cards the official gift for teacher birthdays. Its a little bit of a challenge coming up with new things to write using the same old candy bars. I know I could probably just do the same script each time...but, I feel compelled to make each one original. Here's the most recent:

Fathers Day Gift for Grandpa

My sister-in-law just did the CUTEST project for our father-in-law for Fathers' Day. She had an 8x10 canvas and cut out a heart from cardstock, taping the cardstock over the canvas. She assigned each of the grandkids a color from the ink pad. The grandkids filled the inside of the heart with 20 fingerprints each. Then, at the bottom of the canvas, she had the kids put one of their fingerprints with their assigned color and write their name next to it. The idea was inspired by a gift done in her son's preschool class for the teachers for an end of the year gift. I just love how it turned out.

This is the canvas with the cardstock taped over it.

Here's an example of a project done as
an end of the year teacher gift.

Here is our finished product for Grandpa!