Teacher Appreciation Week

This is the first year I have had a child in “real school” and for that reason, I am fairly new to the whole process of teacher appreciation week (TAW).  I didn’t know if I was expected to do something for TAW and for the end of the year or if you choose one or the other.  After some input from my more experienced mommy friends, I decided to go with tiny gifts for all of the teachers in my children’s lives with an additional bigger gift for the 3 main teachers at the end of the year (which happens to fall just 2 1/2 weeks after TAW, go figure).

I am an inherently generous spirit who derives great pleasure out of giving gifts to others, but since Publisher’s Clearing House has yet to show up with my check, I am on an extremely limited budget when it comes to these teacher gifts.  So, what to do?  Head back to Pinterest (just can’t get away from there!).

I knew the gifts had to be at least ‘semi-homemade’ so I kept my search to simple things that seemed genuinely sweet (even if a little bit corny) and things that wouldn’t break the bank.  Here’s a few ideas that worked for me and the websites that have the amazing FREE printables to go along with the ideas!  Hopefully they will help inspire someone else who is searching for ideas for their kids too!

• “Tea-riffic Teacher” water bottle – I kind of combined 2 ideas here (printables from Domesticated Lady and DIY instructions for a powdered drink package holder from Crystal & Co.) because I liked them both but you can actually just use one or the other if you prefer.  This idea involves printing a cute bottle label that says “for a TEA-riffic teacher” and adding a powdered package of Snapple to the package, either via the easy DIY holder or by simply tying it to the mouth of the bottle.
  

  water bottle label

  

  ok, this didn’t turn out quite as pretty as I hoped, but I ran out of time. It was easy to do by hand, though!

• “Fortunate to Have You As a Teacher” Box – I happened to have some tiny, colorful Chinese takeout boxes that I got at a clearance sale at Michael’s a long time ago that I thought would be cute containers for gifts and this idea seemed like the perfect match!  I just printed out the lovely free printable from eighteen25 (via a guest post on How Does She)and purchased a bag of fortune cookies from the grocery store.  It’s a silly little gift, but it still says we took the time to think about you!
  

  fortune cookies

  

  little tag inside

  

  finished take out box with initial letter and thank you tag

• “A&Wesome Teacher”drink gift –  This idea came from a blog on Nothing But Country originally intended for a Father’s Day gift, but the author was brilliant enough to realize that this would work for teachers too and she provided FREE printable labels!  I tweaked it a little because I used a box of freezable root beer pops instead of the actual soda bottles, but it can go with anything A & W themed!  We will be giving this one to my son’s PE teacher, who spends a lot of time outside!
  

  perfect for a man teacher!

• “We Need S’more Teachers Like You” – One day each month I am asked to bring a small snack for my son’s class to enjoy.  I have done granola bars, fruit snacks, crackers, pretzels, etc., but when I saw this idea for s’mores on the glue sticks and tape website, I knew I had to make it for his class, especially since my day to bring snack falls on Teacher Appreciation Day! (The great thing about this site/gift is that she also provides tags for other people who you might need to give a little gift to every now and then and it’s so simple!)  I used a tag from Me and My Insanity for the snacks because they were smaller and easier to print.  I added some cute “owl miss you” labels from Lisa Storms to the chocolate in the bag.
  

  little packs for the kids and a bigger pack for the teachers

  

  “owl miss you” chocolate wrappers

I’m still working on the end of the year gifts for a few more teachers, but these turned out to be just what we were looking for and very easy to put together!  As always, Pinterest came through for me, even if it still made me feel inadequate because I was once again just stealing borrowing ideas from other, more creative people (we still have that love/hate relationship).