Teacher Appreciation Week: Luncheon and Gifts

The final day of teacher appreciation week, we did a luncheon. Honestly, feeding 50 some-odd people was an intimidating thing for me. One friend told me to just cater it--which is a viable option. Before I went with that, I talked with another friend who told me no way to cater! She would help me out.

She made some BBQ pork meat. She spent $50 on meat and rolls for sandwiches--incredible right? Then I ordered a couple of sheets of fresh brownies from a local bakery and we had the room moms each bring a side dish. I didn't assign what type of dish--just something to go on the side. We had a variety of green salads, pasta salads, fruit salads, fruit dishes, vegetable trays...plenty of variety. We did it open house style so they could come eat when it worked with their schedule.

Another gift we did was we had volunteers take over bus duty for the teachers that week. I had five moms a day sign up to relieve bus duty for the teachers--the gift of time.

I had a lot of money left over. I first got a gift card to a store for each teacher.

I also wanted to do a gift for the teacher break room. I went in one day and snooped around. I took pictures of the room so I could remember what they had and what they needed. As I was in there, I was HOT. I don't get hot, even as a pregnant lady it is rare for me to be hot. I visited with the principle and asked if they had any sort of fan they used in the room. They did not. So I went and got a nice fan for the room. It even has a timer so they can set it and it will turn off automatically (no fans going all weekend).

I also got a hot chocolate machine. Most of the school year is cold here, so I thought that would be a fun one for them.

The teachers seemed to love teacher appreciation week! I got great feedback and some nice thank-you notes. Now to start planning it for next year...

Teacher Appreciation Week: Seed Packs

I forgot to take a picture of this, so I am using a picture off the web.

Another gift for Teacher Appreciation Week I did to go along with the theme of "Nurturing Gardens" was a couple of seed packs. I did one vegetable or herb pack (most people around here garden) and one perennial flower pack. In picking vegetables, I was sure to only do packs of things that could still be planted in this growing season.

 I then tied the two packs together using Rafia (as seen above--Rafia can be found in the floral section of any craft store). I also included the quote: "Without hard work, nothing grows but seeds" by Gordon B. Hinckley.I put all of the packets in a basket and dropped the basket off in the office. The teachers and staff could then go at their leisure (ha! leisure for teachers) and peruse the seeds and choose what interested them.

Summer Round-Up 2012

Here are the summer activities we have on the blog to date.

First, sometimes summer is a time we want to relax and not worry about learning activities. We can really get learning in through simple ways. Last summer, we ran a series on Simple Summer activities that are simple, fun, and enriching.

• Simple Summer Fun: Bubbles
• Simple Summer Fun: Camping
• Simple Summer Fun: Cloud Watching
• Simple Summer Fun: Coloring
• Simple Summer Fun: Easy Crafts
• Simple Summer Fun: The Fair
• Simple Summer Fun: Gardening
• Simple Summer Fun: Museums
• Simple Summer Fun: Park Day
• Simple Summer Fun: Popsicles
• Simple Summer Fun: Reading
• Simple Summer Fun: Sand
• Simple Summer Fun: Sidewalk Chalk
• Simple Summer Fun: Squirt Bottles
• Simple Summer Fun: The Zoo
• Simple Summer Fun: Walks and Bike Rides
• Simple Summer Fun: Water Play

We also have some fun ideas for celebrating summer:

• Family Outings
• Hiking
• Outdoor Bubble Bath
• Outdoor Fun: Mud Paint
• Paint Free Painting
• Pitch a Tent!
• Pouring Yourself a Drink
• Preventing (or minimizing) Summer Setback
• S'mores (new way)
• Taking Advantage of Vacation
• You Pick Farms

And some summer crafts:

• Balloon Hacky Sack
• Paper Pieces Sun
• Watermelon Crepe Paper Pic

But summer isn't always just fun and games (though learning happens through those). Here are some more academic ideas for summer:

• Avoiding Summer Set-Back
• Summer Bridge Activities: Four Types of Reading
• Summer Bridge Activities: Four Ways to Squeeze Reading Into Your Day
• Summer Reading Programs
• Preventing (or Minimizing) Summer Setback

Teacher Appreciation Week: Subway Art

Subway art is very popular right now. For one of the teacher's gifts during teacher appreciation week, I decided to make a subway art piece for each teacher.

Several weeks before the big week, I went to the school during lunch. I had written each teacher's name at the top of a piece of paper. I then walked around from table to table and asked the kids to list of adjectives they liked about their teacher. 

I then took these lists of words and made the subway art in Photoshop Elements using the words from the children. I have pictured here three examples.

There are several teachers and specialists that it is hard to get personalized words for--the resource teacher, the literacy specialist, etc. For them, I did this:

For the PE teacher, I did words like "jump" and "persevere." For the music teacher, I did musical words like "allegro" and "forte."

Teacher Appreciation Week: Gift of Flowers

Way back last August when I started planning teacher appreciation week, I asked Raegan for ideas. One she gave me that fit perfectly with the theme of "Nurturing Gardens" was to have the children each bring a flower to the teachers. I sent this note home:

Hi Parents and Students!

Next week (May 7-11) is Teacher Appreciation Week at OUR Elementary. This is a great chance to show our teachers and staff how much we appreciate all they do for our children.

Our theme this year is “Nurturing Gardens.” For one of the gifts, we will be providing a vase for each teacher. We ask that each student bring a flower to give to his/her teacher(s). It can be a flower from your yard, a flower from the store,  paper flower, a synthetic flower…whatever your child would like to do. The idea is when the teacher has the flowers, she will have a beautiful bouquet that is unique—just like her group of students.

We will give the vase Monday. You are welcome to bring the flower any day that week. Thanks so much!

-Valerie Plowman
PTO rep over Teacher Appreciation

As promised, Monday I gave each teacher a vase. With it, I gave this poem I wrote (not the best poem ever written--please don't analyze it):

You love, teach, and nurture each day.
As the year passes, we bloom in our way.
We’ve grown to be so beautiful and grand,
In this growth, you’ve had an important hand.

We give you this vase to fill with a bouquet
of flowers that represent each of us, and say,
“We thank you, we love you. And please keep in mind
your effort has helped us to be one of a kind.”

I was concerned about students remembering to bring flowers in. Tuesday, I gave each teacher a beautiful yellow rose as pictured above. I attached a note that said "Thank you for helping our children to bloom." I knew this way there would be at least one flower in the vase that could remind students about bringing a flower. 

The teachers loved getting all of their flowers. My son gave his flowers out and was a bit surprised at the reaction he got from the various teachers. They all gushed and thanked. It made him feel happy they were happy, but he was confused why it made them so happy. I laughed and explained that if he ever wanted to make a woman happy, he just needed to give her a flower :). It was fun to see the variety and creativity of the flowers. There were all kinds. 

Teacher Appreciation Week: Door Decorations

The first week in May is traditionally Teacher appreciation week. I was the PTO rep over this week. I choose a theme of "Nurturing Gardens." 

For Monday, all of the room moms plus some extra volunteers decorated doors for the teachers, principal, secretary, librarian, various specialists, and aides in the school. Here is what everyone came up with! They are so cute!

I will be sharing everything else we did this week in later posts.

Caterpillar to Butterfly

Supplies:

• Coffee Filter
• Markers, paints, or something to color coffee filter
• Clothespin
• Pom-pom balls
• Pipe cleaner 
• Wiggly eyes
• Scissors
• Glue

Activity:

1. Color the coffee filter. Set aside to dry.
2. Glue some pom-pom balls to a clothes pin. Three works well--that way you can open and close the clothes pin easily.
3. Glue on wiggly eyes.
4. Glue on pipe cleaner for antennae.
5. You can then take the caterpillar and scrunch up the filter in the clothes pin to make a butterfly! This is a great supplement to a caterpillar theme unit!

 Kaitlyn made this at preschool last month and it has been one of her favorite projects by far.

Mother's Day and Flower Round-Up

Mother's Day and Flowers Ideas

• Flower Face
• Gift for Mom or Grandma
• Mother's Day Books 2011

• Straw Flowers

• Wood Flowers

Simple For Mom: Magnet Set

I bought this set from Amazon a few months ago (Learning Resources Classroom Magnet Lab Kit). This set comes with all the magnetic items you see as well as activity ideas for teaching about magnets.

This has been a great activity for the children to explore and play with when I needed something simple and easy to just pull out and do. Magnets are fascinating to children, and just playing with them allows a lot of exploration. We have been very happy with this purchase. When I bought it, it was about 30 dollars and as I write the post, it is about 37 dollars. So you might try to find it cheaper if you like, or wait for the price to lower on Amazon. You never know what the prices will do :) At least I don't.

Color Mixing Equations

Here we have a fun activity to help your child learn what colors go together to make another color. In case you don't know, here are some basic color creations:

Red and Blue make Purple
Red and Green make Brown
Blue and Yellow make Green
Green and Yellow make a lighter green
Yellow and Red make Orange
Blue and Green makes a Blue-green
Adding white makes a color lighter--so adding White to Red makes Pink. Adding White to Black makes Gray.

The activity pictured was done with do-a-dots. The two colors were put in the circle, and then the color they added up to was put after the equal sign.

You could have a testing paper where the child could mix colors to see what two colors created what new color. I would start by demonstrating a color combination and then let the child combine and answer.

Teacher Appreciation Week Ideas

At our Elementary, I am the PTO rep over Teacher Appreciation Week. It is typically in May. I thought I would share ideas I have found around the internet. I will later share exactly what we did for our whole week with theme and all. For this post, here are several fun ideas for the teachers in your life.

Chocolate Pencils

Colorful Crayon Letter

Another Crayon Monogram

Candy Gram Teacher Gift

Teacher Appreciation Week (a whole post with ideas)

A Lot of Teacher Gifts (see this link for a whole lot of ideas)

Teacher Survival Kit

Printables

Teacher Subway Art

Teacher Appreciation Ideas