Teacher Appreciation Day 3

 Today's gift: a set of chalkboard looking thank you cards!

 

I found these 8 packs of cards and pink envelopes in the dollar spot at Target...but they only had 3 and I needed 5 sets.

SO...I opened them and broke them down into personal sets with ribbon.

 Then I added a Wendy's Frosty key tag to them.

 For $1, you can purchase a frosty key tag and receive a free junior frosty with any purchase between now and the end of the year. Plus, all the proceeds go to The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption which is one of our favorite organizations...helping hard to place foster kids find forever families.

There you have it...another adorable gift for a teacher for less than $2 a gift, plus you are helping out a wonderful charity!

And might I suggest Wendy's apple chicken pecan salad while you are there, cause that thing ROCKS!

Teacher Appreciation Day 2

 Today's gift is a chocolate bar.
 I happened to first see this FREE wrapper off of this blog:

The Celebrationshoppe.com is one of my favorite bloggers!

She created this PDF that you can download and personalize with your teachers and child's name for free!!!

Aren't they the cutest thing ever?

"Thank you for raising the bar!"

 I love it!

SO I printed mine all out...although I was disappointed that the colors were not as vibrant and pretty on my printer. For Vivi's teachers (ten in the whole preschool), I will send the PDF to Office Max and have them print them and they will look much better.

Anyway...so then I was at Walgreens and they happened to have Hershey bars 4 for $1.

That is 25 cents a piece, people!!

I asked the cashier why the bars were so cheap and she said they had ordered an abundance of boxes and needed to move them. I said, that works great for me, cause I need sixteen bars!

 

So today I sent in the boys bars to their teachers as our Day 2 of Teacher Appreciation Week gift.

I don't think they will mind the weird colors as much as I do!

Teacher Appreciation Week

 

This is Teacher Appreciation Week at the boys' school.

Jayden has two teachers and two aides.

Isaac has one teacher.

Everyday the teachers will receive from us a gift, and I will share them here!

Today's gift is this personal popcorn bucket.

 I found the buckets and mini Air Heads candy in the dollar spot at Target.

Then I bought mini cans of Coke (on sale), an 8 pack of Reese's peanut butter cups, and a box of individual serving size microwave popcorn (also on sale).

 I already had yellow crinkles from Dollar Tree to look like popcorn coming out.

 I added a tulle ribbon, and after completing 6 popcorn gifts...

(I had extra stuff so I went back and picked up another bucket for a teacher friend of ours)

My total came to only $3 a teacher gift!!

It even surprised ME how low that was.

Stay tuned this week for 4 more gift ideas. :)

End of the School Year

Thursday is Isaac's last day of Pre-K!

It is hard to believe a whole school year has gone by. I remember registering him!

I am hosting an IceCream party for the class tomorrow.

And here are the gifts for his teachers!

It is a cup and giftcard from a place we love called "Shakes".

They sell frozen custard and it is SO goooood.

I stuffed the giftcards in with some pink paper crinkles to look like a strawberry milkshake. It is topped off with cotton balls, pulled apart to look like "whipped cream"and a pom pom "cherry".

I had these fun summer bendy straws to complete the look.

This works well with Starbucks cups too, just use brown paper crinkles.

I think they will love them.

Billy said "well done, honey!" I was proud. :)

I thought delivering them to the class in this cup holder added a fun touch!

Day 5-Teacher Appreciation Week

Insulated drink cups...
with drink packets of Crystal light tea and lemonades, and Starbucks Via coffee.
And a pretty daisy stir stick.

I will not go into the drama that was getting these cups...
as I do not have the energy to relive that.
And i hesitate to give the company I got them from any business (Kohls) because of the h*** they put me through...but I digress.
The celophane bags, ribbon, and "water-like" crinkles were from Hobby Lobby.
In all, this gift cost me:
$7 a piece!

That finishes off Teacher Appreciation Week.
It was fun, but I am glad it is over. :)

The teachers were very sweet to ask if they could keep me on for next year and they all said they loved the presentation of the gifts. It is the little details that sometimes makes all the difference!

P.S. for my Dallas area readers, you can get adorable polka dot insulated glasses like this at Sam Moon with your teacher's initial on it for around $10 a cup. With the drink packets, that would make a great end of the year gift to go into the summer!

Day 4-Teacher Appreciation Week

I am posting this a day in advance.

Tomorrow's gifts to the teachers are these small clip boards

with a set of 5 Thank You cards.

I found the clipboards at JoAnn's for just $2.50 a piece (and it came with that bow!)

and then happened upon a box of 20 matching cards at Hobby Lobby for only $2.99.

So this brings this adorable little gift to just about:

$3.25 per teacher.

Wow!

Day 3-Teacher Appreciation Week

Ok...when you have four teachers to give to times 5 days...you have got to think outside the box!

Today's gift is a book donation to the school library.

I wrote a dedication in it to the Pre-K teachers and tied a very big black and white polka dot bow around it. This is a BIG book, thick like a text book, and had to retail for around $25. But they had a series of them at Half Price, all brand new, and all different subject matters. We went with this one because it was the least expensive of the four at only $8. Isaac wrote a personal letter to each teacher and we decorated them with stickers that he will give with this book.

So that brings today's gift total to:

$2 per teacher!

Day 2-Teacher Appreciation Week

Key Lime and Cherry Lemonade Cupcakes! Here they are boxed and decorated,

I could not for the life of me,

get this picture to rotate.

But you get the idea.

I had the boxes and sprinkles.
I bought the ribbon and reusable cupcake holders
at Hobby Lobby. With the cupcake supplies,
the total for these gifts came to...

drum roll...

Just $3 each box!
I did them for Vivi's two teachers as well.

Day 1 of Teacher Appreciation Week

Fruit Bowl
With a Balloon.

So today begins my teacher appreciation gifts series.

I will be posting every day what I came up with to give to each of Isaac's four teachers.

Today he gave them these cute little fruit bowls.

The bowl, filling, cellophane wrap, and balloons came from the dollar store.

The picnic gingham ribbon (along with all of my ribbons for this week) came from Hobby Lobby and all their ribbon was half off...score!

With the fruit, my total for this gift was $6 each.

Special shout out to my Mom who created all of the gift tags for our gifts.

This apple one is so cute!

Teacher Appreciation

This is the gift we made for Isaac's

four teachers on Earth Day.

It is a bucket with a cute little metal shovel, a packet of herbs,

and a pkg. of Brite crawler candy gummy worms.

I just found out on Monday that next week is Teacher Appreciation Week at his school. I have been looking forward to this all semester..but did not know it was this soon! I have planned to give his four teachers a gift every day of the week, plus Vivi's two preschool teachers on Tues. and Thurs. (Ya'll know my love language is gifts by now..right?) The trick in doing this on a budget for so many teachers, for so many days is: (1) Have a very supportive husband and (2) Be willing to shop around in order to (3) put together each gift for under $10 a piece and on two days less than $5 a piece.
Whew, did you follow that? Plus- I did not want to duplicate anything I have already done for them this year...which you can view here. (I also gave them chocolate bunnies for Easter but didn't take a picture of those).

The challenge set before me was not an easy one, I tell you! BUT after three days of making lots of phone calls to retailers, shopping at Jo Ann's, Michaels, Hobby Lobby, Dollar Tree, Half Price Books, Target and an online order from Kohls...I am happy to say it has been done!!! The rest of the week will be spent preparing them and, beginning Monday I will do a post each day of what that day's gift is and how much it cost, including ribbon and wrappings. I have asked my mom to please, please, please make me gift tags on her Cricut to go along with each gift theme and she has graciously agreed. Can't wait to see what she comes up with.

Stay tuned for the unveiling of Teacher Appreciation Week....

School Stuff

Well, as you can see we are back online! We had to buy a new laptop. Thankfully Staples had a great sale on a Dell. So we are back in business. :)
While offline, Vivi began going to preschool. Here she is with her napmat. She loves carrying her things in and her teachers are so sweet. I will very likely get on their April enrollment for next year. The house is so quiet without Vivi and Chloe squawking at each other. I am enjoying my Tuesdays and Thursdays, I can tell you that...even only being down one child!

She turns 3 years old in two weeks. Can't believe it...

Going right along with School news....

Isaac had an entire 6 weeks of positive reports. Green days means he did well, blue days means he did really well (usually helped another child out with something), yellow means he disobeyed a rule and red is usually several incidents. Thankfully he has never been on red. But his track record has been 2-3 yellows in a 6 week period. Not this time, baby!! We were so proud as each week went by. We celebrated with letting him order anything he wanted at Sonic, a rare treat (except the only soda he is allowed is Sprite Zero). He was very happy to order fries too...a food that we do not ever order for our kids.

But this was his special day.

Way to go, Isaac!!

Next week is Open House and also the last week before Spring Break.

We put together these baskets for his teachers to send them off on their mini vacation time.

The theme is Movie night.

I did these for only around $12 a teacher. It is a popcorn bucket that you microwave filled with yellow paper crinkles, two cokes, a box of Milk Duds, a pkg. of licorice, a giftcard to Blockbuster, and cute little movie night napkins I found, along with a note that tells them to have a wonderful Spring Break.

I think they will love them!

I am glad to be back to blogging. Now i need to go catch up with everyone else.

Candy Cane Cupcakes

Take white cake mix and add peppermint extract and a handful of crushed candy canes.
Roll the frosted edges in candy cane sprinkles.

The frosting is butter, powdered sugar, milk, and peppermint extract. Mmmmm

Ta Da! The completed gift!

I gave these to Isaac's 4 teachers yesterday. They loved them!

I also added a chick fil a giftcard in a cute bag w/some mints!

Thanksgiving gifts to the teachers.

My mom and I made these pretty little coffee cups on her Cricut and I slid Starbucks giftcards in there with a note that says "Thanks a Latte". I then taped chocoloate covered grahams to the back. It was fun that a couple of the teachers told me in their thankyou cards what drink they would be getting!

We love our teachers...

Throughout the school year I have tried to shower Isaac's teachers (four of them!) with gifts and little tokens of appreciation. I posted at the beginning of the school year about the importance of spoiling your child's teacher often- especially if your child can be a real handful...ahem. Of course my little angel would never fall under that category!

Ha! But I did get a nice compliment today when he and I dropped this bucket of goodies off (with a diet coke, smartfood popcorn pack, twix, peppermint patty, tootsie pop, and pumpkin pie granola bar for each teacher). One of the teacher aides- who happens to also be my fav of the four- said to me that the teachers were saying they would have to fail Isaac this school year so he would be forced to be in their class again next year! Well it is good to know they want him back...or is it the treats they want back?!!

I already have an idea for their Thanksgiving gift. I am going to make little coffee cup cards with a slot for a $5 Starbucks giftcard and it will say "Thanks a latte for all you do!" and I will tie the card to a little turkey cookie. Ask Billy, I am a sucker for gift giving.

I also got to see how important it is to be involved in the PTA. I was one of only 3 moms to show up to this month's meeting and I actually got input on some coming activites- like this week's red ribbon week. All I have is a little half day pre-k child, but being involved is already helping him to be connected to the school. The PTA president told me that the pre-k teachers are thrilled to have me this year because it is one of the only years they have had a room mom, and in the past noone helped out at all with the class parties- the party food and supplies would have to come straight from the PTA funding, and one of the officers would have to leave her child's party to help out with the Pre-K. Such a shame.

Well not this year, ladies!!

Meet the Teacher(s)!

We went up to the elementary school for meet the teacher last night. I walked in to find out he actually will have two teachers and two aides!! And the funniest thing is that he is the afternoon class which currently only has 6 kids enrolled including him! The morning class has 17! His class could get up to 10 or 12 the first month of school though as parents realize their child is eligible for Pre-K.
Here he is in front of his locker.
Yellow apples are the morning class which has to share lockers,
but the afternoon class doesn't!
He will be going to school M-F from 12:00-3:00.
In the reading corner, which also had a puppet theater with lots of ethnicities amongst the puppet people! The Dr. puppet was African American. Yeah! Looks like several of his classmates (based on their names I read on their lockers)
are either Asian or Middle Eastern.

Here he is at his table. It had a little apple nametag. I guess they didn't get the memo that yellow is his favorite color! He will make sure they know. :)

The front door to his classroom.

And here is the gift I brought for his teacher. Good thing I put two bottles since he has two teachers and I thought he only had one! Too bad for the aides. I told Billy Christmas gifts to his FOUR teachers is going to be tricky this year!

School starts Monday!!