End of Year Teacher Gift

It's that time of year again...the school year is winding down and it is time to let my daughter's teacher know that I appreciate the time and love she has put into teaching my little girl this year. Last year I painted terracotta pots with chalkboard paint and added a little bundle of chalk (tied with twine) plus some packets of herb seeds and a nice little quote. I had my child write a note to the teacher on the back of the note and it made a nice gift that didn't break the bank and that was, I hope, usable for the teacher. Perhaps we'll do the same thing this year since we've changed schools...hmm...my wheels still are turning on this one!

(Idea originally found here.)

St. Patrick's Day Teacher Gifts

Yesterday afternoon my little girl and I took some time and made a few small St. Patrick's Day gifts for her teacher and other key people at her school. I found a great tutorial for this project at Inspiring Creations and was able to find most of the supplies (except for the candy and little pots) in my stash of supplies here at home.
I mostly followed the instructions listed on the original blog, except I used a lollipop stick to hold up the shamrock (because I have lots of them!) and I didn't bother to glue the floral foam into the little clay pots, I just wedged it in there. The shamrocks are hot-glued onto the lollipop sticks and my daughter wrote little messages on a second green shamrock that I hot-glued onto the back of the stick.
Then we packaged everything up with a cellophane bag and tied with a gold ribbon and a cute tag (that I embellished with rub-on letters from my scrapbooking stash) and her little gifts are ready for St. Patrick's Day!

Teacher Appreciation Door Decorating

Yesterday I talked about the gifts my daughter gave her teachers. Today I want to talk about door decorating. I've seen the idea of decorating classroom doors for teacher appreciation day online, but never in person--still, I was excited to bring this idea to my daughter's school this year. She attends a preschool-grade 8 school, so it was a bit of a challenge to make it work for all the grade levels, but I think we did it. The teachers LOVED it and were totally surprised by the doors.

The door pictured above is the door I decorated for my daughter's classroom. She is in a first/second grade classroom. I sent home flower petals with each child with a sentence starter on each petal for the student to complete. (My teacher is fun because... I like it when my teacher... ) Then the stem of the flower is made up of pictures of the children. The watering can says XXX showers her students with... and the droplets say patience, kindness, love, respect, and wisdom! Then I added a few cute little bugs to the picture (caterpillar, ladybug, dragonfly, butterfly, and a bee) and labeled them with the names of the specialists, the principal, the priest, and the office manager. It was a big hit and I had a lot of fun making it!
This is the preschool door--with the teachers names covered for privacy. The "A+" is on there because we also were celebrating Catholic Schools Week and the theme was "A+ for Catholic Schools". I forgot to take a picture of the kindergarten door, but it was covered with shiny stars and pictures of the children. Really bright and colorful!
This was the 3/4th grade door (with a lot of sunlight shining in on it from the stairwell!). I had to erase the initials of the school and the name of the teacher. What I really love about this door is that the room mother had the students AND the parents get involved. Each of those handprints has writing on it with things the individual (some students and some parents) appreciates about the teacher. I love this idea!
Whoops! This mom forgot to measure the door, so we had to do some cutting and rearranging when we went to hang the door decoration after school. Luckily it all worked out! She had each child do anagrams at home of a word they would use to describe the teacher and she included those words in the definition that is printed at the top of the yellow part of the paper. Perfect for a 5th/6th grade classroom.

I didn't take a picture of the 7th/8th grade door, but it was a simple poster and the room mother gave me a gift bag with some cards for the teacher to be put on the door knob. It is hard to get those almost-high schoolers to want to be crafty!

Here are some other resources for teacher appreciation door decorating that you may find useful:

• Skip to My Lou
• Mommy Blessings
• Sweet Craft Cakes

I'm linking up to Jen's Weekend WrapUp Party at Tatertots and Jello, Show Us Your Best at No Time For Flashcards, and Show and Share Day at Just a Girl! By the way, I'm still trying (desperately!) to win one of those handy-dandy Silhouette machines! The Domestic Diva has one she is giving away!

Teacher Appreciation Day Pocket Tag Tutorial

After making a gift for my daughter's kindergarten teacher, I realized I wanted to make a little something for the auxiliary teachers at her school for teacher appreciation week. These water bottle pocket tags are all over the internet--I have no idea who was "the first" on this one! At any rate, these work well for a multitude of occasions and were easy to adapt to fit teacher appreciation week.
First I marked and cut my cardstock (use cardstock, not construction paper, because you need the stiffness) for the overall size I needed for the unfolded tag. This took a bit of trial and error, but ultimately I made them 8 1/2 x 3 1/4 inches.
Next I marked my folds and folded the tag. The top part (where you see the circle) will be the top of the tag that goes over the bottle top. The other folded part will become the pocket of the tag. My original plan was to adhere the blue circles (made from cardstock) and then use a different decorative hole punch to punch through the circle...but my second punch couldn't be centered properly. So for a couple of bottles I used a blade and hand-cut a hole through the circle...then I realized I could abandon the blue circle and just use a scallopy punch and it would look even better!

At any rate, I modified my folds based on whether or not I used the blue circle. For the ones without the circle, both folds were at the two inch mark--these are my favorite tags. Remember, you're folding one end down and one end up. It will look like a zig-zag.
Here you can see my hand-cut hole for the bottle lid...I don't recommend this approach! The light blue rectangle is 3 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches and is the background for the drink mix that I put in the pocket of the tag.
This tag has just a scallop punch for the bottle top to go through--much better looking than my hand-cut circles! I used the pokey tool to poke holes for the star shape brads. It is one of my favorite scrapbooking tools! Usually I use brads as decoration, but these are holding the pocket together. Here you can also see the note I added to the front of the tag. I printed the note onto cardstock so that the paper would match the rest of the tag.
I took the original labels off the bottles, added my tag and some Crystal Light, and that was it! I made these during my son's naptime. We gave them out on Monday and they were a hit!

Teacher Appreciation Week

Teacher Appreciation Week is this week! We have been so busy at our house and my brain is on overload--so I turned to the internet for teacher appreciation ideas and was not disappointed! Here are pictures of my version of an idea I found on eighteen25. I love this idea and it was fun to make! She has step by step instructions on her blog.

The box is a $5 embroidery floss divided plastic box I bought at JoAnn's--the black ribbon came from there too. The paper on the lid is from my stash, as are the black rub-on letters. I put my Cricut to use again (!!) to cut the flower for the lid. I did ink the edges of the paper on the lid--I thought it gave the paper a nice finished edge.
Inside the lid I did something a bit different than the original and had my kindergarten daughter write a note to her teacher. She did such a good job!
The box contains goodies for her desk--almost everything is from Staples. The mini hand-sanitizer is from my (rather large!) stash of sanitizer and the Hershey's nuggets are from Target. The rest is from Staples--mostly from their little "bulk" section.

I think our kindergarten teacher will like this and find it a nice change from coffee mugs and other typical teacher appreciation stuff...at least I hope she will!!

We may have a winner!

Yesterday afternoon we visited the Catholic school I mentioned in an earlier post. And...we may have a winner! We walked away from our visit with a VERY good feeling. The principal was very friendly as were all the teachers we encountered. The kindergarten classroom was inviting (as were the other classrooms) and we were pleased with answers to our questions about how the school will challenge Princess.

The best part was seeing how students reacted to Princess. School was out at 3:10pm and we arrived at 3:20pm so there still were some students around. Princess tends to try to engage people in conversation--the students were very patient and not at all annoyed with our four year old.

If we had to choose a school TODAY for our children, we would choose this school. We asked for (and were given) contact information for some parents so that we can get their views on the school too. We're keeping our fingers crossed. It really was a great visit!

And, I must admit--I love the uniforms. I've always loved school uniforms and the ones at this school are pretty cute! Plaid jumpers with red sweaters for the little girls and plaid skirts with blue sweaters for the older girls. Boys wear blue pants with red sweaters when they're in the lower grades and then their sweaters switch to blue when they're older.

Reading and Schooling

Princess is 4 1/2 and reads fluently. She started reading just before she turned 4 and her fluency has steadily improved since then. Now she has moved beyond easy readers and will read just about anything. She reads books to herself, to her brother, to anyone who will listen. It is wonderful and amazing to listen to her. She adores reading and books and it thrills me to see my love of books and reading embodied in my little girl.

The downside to all of this? She is 100% ready for kindergarten...and yet she is not ALLOWED to go until the fall of 2009. That is more than a year away! This is ridiculous. Unfortunately we cannot find a school anywhere around here who will allow her to attend this fall.

I know kindergarten is about more than reading, but trust me, she is READY. She has two years of academic preschool under her belt and knows how to behave in a classroom setting. She does basic math problems, she uses scissors well, she does phonetic spelling. The child is more ready for kindergarten than many students in school now.

Frustrated doesn't even begin to describe my feelings at this point. To add to my frustration, we don't know where to send her to school. Our local public school is okay but not great. The local Christian school is good but expensive--plus since we're Catholic, eventually we will have to deal with things such as the portrayal of Catholics vs Martin Luther in the curriculum plus we're not too enthused about aspects of the science curriculum. The Catholic schools are an option. One school is twenty minutes away and is relatively new. We went to an open house at this school and were not very impressed by the kindergarten teacher or the curriculum. The other Catholic school is thirty minutes away and we're going on a tour there on Monday. It is a more established school and is the least expensive school of all the options. Oh, and of course we have to add in commuting costs in addition to tuition amounts.

The only other school options are so expensive that we can't even consider them. We can barely consider these options as it is. Homeschooling keeps flitting in and out of my mind, but I really don't think I'm cut out for it. I'm not social enough and fear that I would keep my children at home too much. Plus I think successful homeschoolers are 100% committed to homeschooling and that just doesn't describe me.

Ack. Where is the manual on parenting when you need it?