Teacher Gift Round Up–Fun, Inexpensive, and DIY

Looking back over the past few weeks, we’ve done a pretty good job of giving you fabulous ideas to treat your teachers at the end of the school year.  I thought it might be helpful to consolidate all of those great ideas into one post, to make your planning easy.

Starting from the top right (the apothecary jar), here are my favorites:

• Apothecary jar filled with treats and monogrammed with vinyl.  I buy my  jars at TJ Maxx, Home Goods, and Marshall’s and cut the vinyl monograms myself using my Silhouette Cameo, or you can purchase them in our 11 Magnolia Lane Etsy shop.  You can read more about how I decorate and fill the jars {here}.

• “Thanks A Latte” cards with Starbucks, Panera, or local coffee shop gift cards on the back.  I love these gifts for our male teachers, who don’t always seem to appreciate hot pink monograms!  Read more about where to buy (or find for free) {here}.

• Monogrammed reusable shopping totes.  I made these for all of our female teachers and staff members.  I bought black and white damask totes (I found mine at Michael’s) and added their monograms in a variety of fun vinyl colors: hot pink, turquoise, and lime green. Here’s a whole basketful, packaged and ready to go:

• Personalized note cards (I love these).  Teachers have so many notes to write, so let’s make it pretty for them.  By the way, I just love how they always write proper thank you notes to their students, don’t you?  What a great example!  Terry featured these cards in her awesome post about Teacher Appreciation Week gifts, and of course all of those great ideas would work for the end of the year, too.

• Chalkboard-style learning tree printable from iDIYjr on Etsy.  I’ve seen many of the fingerprint-style keepsake trees, but this one has the option of being either a fingerprint tree or a signature tree.  We used this for my fifth grader’s teacher and the kids really enjoyed writing their names neatly on the leaves.  It’s an instant download, so it’s not too late!

• A monogrammed Tervis Tumbler.  I know, addicted much to all those monograms?  Yes, thanks. 🙂  I bought it plain and monogrammed it to match the lid color I chose.  Tervis has a bajillion different styles and will even monogram them for you, but it’s much less expensive for me to do it myself.  The folks at the Tervis stores will also give a generous 15% military discount, if you didn’t know that already.  So I tend to go into the store and give them my business rather than ordering online.  I never used these cups until we moved to Savannah, but they don’t sweat in this crazy heat and humidity and that’s why every single person in this city has at least one!

• Last but not least, I love this darling chalkboard printable from Princess Snap on Etsy.  Terry featured it in her Teacher Appreciation post and I bought one for my daughter’s teacher–she loved it!  Princess Snap has a great eye for graphics and there are several other printables in her store that I just love.  Buy a pretty frame and you’re all set!

If you still need an easy idea for your child to give to his or her classmates, then my daughter and I had fun with these Pop Rocks goody bags–give them a try!  The free printable I made is part of the post:

As many of you know if you’ve been following us for awhile, this is my kids’ first year back in school after several years of being home schooled (two for my daughter, almost four for my son).  While I would homeschool them again in a heartbeat if the situation warranted it, we are so blessed as a family to have found Veritas Academy in Savannah.  It’s Classical (think Latin, Logic, and very, very tough if you’re unfamiliar with the classical model of education!), Christian (an absolute essential for our family), and Covenantal (that means that parents must be involved and a significant part of daily assignments are completed at home with the parents, rather than at school.  It also means that they have an abbreviated school day, leaving lots of time for extracurriculars, reading, family, and play.

You might already know this, but most teachers at private schools make considerably less than their public school counterparts, because obviously private schools aren’t subsidized by our tax dollars.  So even though I’m working for tuition dollars these days, I want these teachers to know how very, very much I appreciate them and the sacrifices they make as they pursue their calling to teach, shepherd, inspire, and raise up our next generation of Godly leaders.   When I put it that way, a few vinyl monograms don’t seem nearly enough, now do they?!

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Thanks for stopping by~