Question: If you have kids in school, do you give the teachers an end-of-year gift? And if so, what do you give and what is the approximate value? I’ll put a poll over to the right to get an idea of general answers, but we’ll also discuss in the comment section.
Our school has been encouraging no gifts and/or homemade gifts “because of the economy.” Also, we are getting a new principal in the fall. So, I wrote a letter addressed to the outgoing and incoming principals praising K’s teacher. I enclosed a copy of the letter in our card to Teacher.
I say have the kids write a thank you note/ picture.
I’ve never taught, but there is nothing I treasure more than a drawing or a note from my clients after we are done together.
My son’s class is giving a gift card organized by the class mom. But I was wondering what, if anything, I should get his teacher in addition — she’s a wonderful teacher and he’s really enjoyed her class this year (he’s in first grade). So thanks for bringing this up, Swistle. :) I have the feeling it will be full of good advice.
My kids are both in daycare (“school”) and each has a room mom. The room mom takes up a voluntary collection from the parents to purchase gift cards for the teachers. In my 3 year olds room, there are 18 kids. The Mom asked for $37, to include the three main teachers and the cleaning crew. We bought a separate Target GC for $25 for his favorite teacher, who is an aide and not considered one of the main teachers (really bothers me, but that’s a separate issue). My daughter, who is 1, is in a room with 11 babies. There are 6 teachers. The parents were asked to contribute $60, with the theory that each teacher would get a gift card worth $100. Again, voluntary, so I don’t know how many parents contribute.
One of the things I try to do is make sure that a few times a year I get the teachers breakfast/coffee, or make them some kind of treat to show them how much I value them. I hope that when my kiddos are in school full time I continue with this approach, as I think teachers are among the most undervalued members of our work force.
As a former teacher (8 years, high school), I most appreciated the kind of notes @Nowheymama describes. Positive, specific, heartfelt and copied to supervisors. No other gift ever came close.
As you probably can imagine, anything edible that was homemade went directly into the trash. You just never knew for sure about it.
I wrote each teacher a note and gave them each a $10 gift card to Barnes and Noble. I only had two kids in school this year though, and they were in K and 1st grade. This coming school year I will have three in school, K, 1st, 2nd. I will probably continue to give gifts until they get to the age when they have multiple teachers for academic subjects. I can’t afford to do something for all of them. I also made sure my girls wrote their own notes to the teacher telling them thank you for a great school year. Every teacher I have ever talked to/read about says handwritten notes from the kids mean just as much as gifts.
I tried to do little things throughout the year, including a small Christmas gift, a b-day gift (which I wouldn’t have known except that my B was so excited about it!) and my favorite, an email pat-on-the-back, which I copied the building principal in on. Being a teacher myself, I was too crazed at the end of the year. I intended to do something, but I don’t think I did (it was so busy, I don’t even remember!). A personal note from my B with a gift card tucked in would’ve been nice. Not more than $10.
Rule #1: Don’t stress about it! Teachers are appreciative of school ending, they are not concerned with extra gifts! :-) Summer is a gift!
We gave a gift this year, it was our boy’s first year in school. He is in a developmental preschool in a K-8 school, but he is only four (today!). So there’s a teacher, her assistant, and two therapists. We gave them each $25 gift cards to Kohl’s. It’s too hard to make cookies or whatever through the year, because so many kids in his class are on special diets. I didn’t know if they drank coffee or whatever, so I just went with the once a year, generic gift card. It seemed like a lot but we didn’t do anything at Christmas or Teacher Appreciation Day or whatever. I used to work in a private school and the teachers there got CRAZY gifts – I was the director of IT and sometimes even I got gifts from parents, it was NUTS. But I really think my son’s teachers and therapists go above and beyond so I wanted to do something too.
I only have one kid in school – so I am likely to spend a bit more then someone with 2 or more children in school.
I had two daughters in K (same class) and so we gave the classroom teacher a gift card to a local salon for $30. I only did that amount because she had TWO of my children in her class, and because she really stuck her neck out for us on several occasions (main one being confronting the principal about letting the girls be in the same classroom).
The girls also painted a set of cards for the teacher and all of the para’s in the room (there were 3 others). Each teacher got a set of around 6 cards, blank on the inside with envelopes included, all tied up with ribbon. I like that it’s consumable and handmade, and features the kids’ artwork.
(Got the idea from Harper’s mom over at Midwest Mom).
After reading these comments, I’m thinking I maybe should have done a lesser dollar amount the teacher giftcard. Oh well.
We generally give Book Thongs – they’re bookmarks sold at Borders that are really pretty. They have stones, beads, or some trinket at one end of either a cord or piece of ribbon, and then another bead at the top. They’re about $6, but beautiful and unique and useful. This year I also got Patrick’s K teacher some funny duckie magnets, froggie paperclips, and some stickers that you’re supposed to put on things like staplers and pencil containers to make them look silly. I thought it was good for K.
How much I spend deprends on the teacher, and how much time the kids spend with them. For instance, Patrick spent time in a second grade classroom as well, so she got a cute pen with owls on it and some flower pushpins, for a total of about $5. Josie had two classroom teachers, since they were splitting the class between two part-time teachers, so they each got a book thong and a set of paperclips I found that have sign language symbols on them. Josie’s enrichment teacher got just a book thong. I think in total I spent about $30 on all of them, which was more than I wanted, but I couldn’t figure out how to eliminate anyone, since three of the teachers were classroom, one let Patrick into hers even though she didn’t have to, and the other one made sure that Josie was actually being challenged two or three times a week and recommeded her to that hoity-toity camp (and she’s married to the guy who is president of the PTA that I’m VPing next year). So, I really was grateful to them all.
I don’t have children in school (we homeschool), but if I did, I would give a small ($10 or so) gift card to Barnes and Noble. Almost every teacher I’ve met is a reader, so I think it would be a safe bet. I also really love the notes to the principals idea. Praise to a supervisor is ALWAYS appreciated.
Bridget was going to a Mother’s Day Out program and they had Teacher Appreciation Week a bit before the year ended. Parents could donate time, money or a baked good or salad for a luncheon. Then they asked for each kid to bring their teachers a flower on Friday of that week. So we donated some cash for the fund and brought flowers for each of her three teachers – a potted orchid that would last a while.
I’m a teacher and my favorite non-note gift this year? A cheap bouquet of flowers (think the ones they sell by the supermarket checkout line). In fact, the prettiest and best smelling ones were stolen from the kid’s neighbor’s yard. Second favorite gift? A cheap pot of annual flowers planted by the kid.
If you don’t want to go that route, go the $10 B & N or Target gift card route.
In our area (Northeast), it is common to give money toward a class gift card for the teacher. The amount is usually between five to ten dollars per student, for the primary teacher only.
I checked the class gift option on the poll but I don’t think it showed up.
Each of my kids’ room mothers are also doing a scrapbook for the teacher and each child was given a page to decorate and answer some questions. All of the pages will be compiled into a gift for the teacher.
I like the way we do it here!
I had my daughter draw a picture for each of her teachers (she was in preschool). Then I cropped and shrunk the picture down on photoshop and cut it to fit the back of a glass tile pendent. Add a little mod podge and a chain and they were the cutest homemade necklaces. All the teachers loved them.
I haven’t been feeling up to much lately (very lazy) so I made a big batch of organic strawberry jam. Easy and we have gifts leftover for unexpected guests and whatnot. Perfect!
Very easy, too.
As a retired elementary school teacher, I must admit to appreciating gifts at the end of the year. Teaching is a huge job that TOOK OVER MY LIFE: I loved the kids and worked my tail off for them at some expense to my own family. Thank-you gifts made me feel appreciated. Number one, however, is a note of appreciation from parents with mention of specific examples of my going the extra mile – copied to the principal. Kids’ letters with the kids’ own art to teachers about what they learned and what they enjoyed are wonderful to receive. Number two – modest gift cards to places like Starbucks or Barnes & Noble or Blockbuster are FABULOUS. As for food, I always ate it, though I know plenty of teachers who throw away homemade food items. I loved being invited with my husband to a child’s home for dinner – especially when the child chose the menu and cooked part of it. The economy is down and some schools discourage monetary gifts – so if this is the case for you, express your appreciation somehow.
i love reading these posts & comments, even though i have nothing to offer seeing as i’m not a teacher AND have no kids. but i do love the note to supervisor / copy to teacher idea. although i guess not if you didn’t like the teacher all that much. :-)
PS
If you’re going to spend $10, gift cards are a far better bet than “stuff.”
My fav teacher’s gift (got the idea from someone else, I’m not this clever) is to buy a nice ice cream scoop, pair it with a small gift card to a local ice cream place and say “Thanks for giving me the SCOOP this year”
My mom taught for 30 years. She loved the Starbucks cards (I think $10 was the norm), was not so fond of the randomly painted wooden tchotchkes. But I’m sure mileage varies.
The word on the street is CONSUMABLES, CONSUMABLES, CONSUMABLES.
For Christmas I gave my son’s teacher a frozen homemade apple pie, to use during the Christmas season. (I guess it depends on the demographic of school as to whether a teacher would throw out homemade food!)
At the year end, we gave her an organic chocolate bar, a flower my son had picked out, and a card with a note of appreciation. So, I spent around $10.
No trinkets!
I don’t have kids, but my mom (who is a piano teacher herself with 70+ students) would always have us send a home-made gift in. It might have been food, a heartfelt craft, or simply flowers from her garden with a nice card we’d made.
She, being a teacher, knew not to give the generic “apple” or “teacher” gifts because she has 800 million mugs, trinkets, ornaments, etc. and they get old VERRRRRRY fast.
We also gave small gifts to other important adults that helped in the school year (girl scout leaders, bus drivers, etc.) along the same lines.
If I had to put a price on them, I’d say each one probably cost $5, give or take the year.
I don’t do end-of-year gifts yet–my son’s in daycare–but we do give holiday gifts. And those have typically been a small portion of homemade edibles, plus a Target gift card (usually $20 for lead teacher, $10-15 for others).
I tend to put a LOT of time and effort into making holiday goodies for teachers, so I’m glad that they told me how much they enjoyed last year’s cookies (dark chocolate cookies sandwiched with pink peppermint icing & dusted with crushed candy canes). Otherwise I’d be really upset about the comment above about teachers throwing out homemade food!
Love the letter idea, with copies to principal. Will have to keep that in mind for when we start school.
Ok, sorry but I have to comment again after reading through the other comments. I’m just sitting here with my mouth open that there are teachers that just throw out homemade food gifts. If that’s your view on it, could you nicely request “no food gifts.” It just seems so wasteful and heartbreaking to think that a family put time and effort (a lot more than just buying a gift card) into making something and it’s immediately thrown away.
My mom has received cookies and other gifts and we always ate them. I’ve given teachers breads or pies that they’ve fawned over and asked for the recipes for. I think taking a homemade good from somebody while trick-or-treating is iffy and dangerous, but if you’re receiving it from a child you’ve taught for 9 months and they’ve come to know and love you as their teacher they aren’t going to poison you!
When my daughter was in preschool we did a “everyone chip in for a v1sa gift card thing” but this year in Kindergarten the room mom never got in touch with anyone about something like this. I volunteered something during teacher appreciation week and then wrote my daughter’s teacher a nice note and had my daughter make her a card as well.
I taught briefly and my favorite gifts were personal notes and gift cards. Homemade treats are nice, but I saw 180 students during the day and the volume of food was overwhelming.
I did have one boy who brought me a traditional Azerbaijani dessert that his mother had made. That was very cool!
It changes in our schools every year with the room mom.
This year, my daughter’s room mom suggested we all just donate a GC (for whatever amount/place we wanted), and she would put them all into a decorated basket for the teacher.
My son’s room mom is having us all chip in $3.50 for a GC of some sort.
I’ve been known to NOT participate with the class. Usually I try to buy nice pens and post-its–stuff I know will probably get used and isn’t too expensive.
I don’t do end of the year gifts mainly because Teacher Appreciation usually falls about 3 or 4 weeks before we get out of school. I always give gift cards and little daily gifts that week. So I feel I’ve already done a lot.
I wanted to weigh in as a former elementary school teacher. The gifts that I appreciated most were either letters of appreciation (copied to the principal) and gift cards to places like target, barnes and noble or the mall. While I appreciated the sentiment behind other gifts, the truth is, I often ended up giving most of them away.
If the room parent is collecting for a class gift, I never expected parents to give above and beyond that. Though I did hope that the room mother would go down the gift card route.
Hi, Swistle! I found your baby name site and I’ve been lurking for a while. I really enjoy your posts. You seem like such a fun and considerate person.
I don’t have children yet, but I think about what I will do with them all of the time. I never thought about gifts to teachers. That must be a relatively new thing, as I can’t remember anyone giving end-of-the-year gifts to teachers when I was growing up. I think my mother may have given gifts to teachers who proved to be exceptional. Personally, I feel sickened by the fact that some people feel obligated to thank all of the teachers who, when it comes down to it, are just doing their jobs. Underpaid? Probably, but still a job. If they want extra praise/perks, they should perform as such. Maybe I feel this way because most of the teachers I know are careless and do poor jobs.
That being said, I would give gifts to the teacher(s) who went the extra mile. The amount I spent would reflect what I could afford, and how great I think they are. I especially like the idea of sending notes to the principal.
The end of the year gifts. Ugg. We do a class gift (basically required as it is a photo book of all the kids in the class with cute quotes and how much do you suck if your kids picture is there and you don’t contribute. Suggested amount in one room $6. In another – $30-40. Yeeesh!). Then the extra is used to buy gift cards. Except I was totally disorganized and ended up giving actual gift cards to one set of teachers because I hadn’t been able to track down the mother collecting the money and then I saw her on the last day and paid up my share so I didn’t suck. And my kids were moved out of the toddler room so I gave all those three teachers gift cards as well. It hurts, I tell you, but is basically standard at this school. Which I love, but we are very much at the bottom of the economic scale there and now and again you can really tell. I also wrote notes to each and every teacher (7 total) about how much I appreciated them and was glad they were in, or had been in, my children’s lives.
Even though I have “opinions!” about teacher gifting, I feel badly that people stress about it. Here’s what we did this year:
Main teacher: bundle of homemade note cards + $25 to Target + note of appreciation from us, and a note dictated by Harper (keep in mind that Harper’s teacher went to LOTS of extra trouble because of dealing with her allergy stuff, which resulted in a reaction-free school year, I would have spent $75 if it was in the budget)
Assistants + speech therapist: bundle of handmade note cards + note from us and note dictated by Harper
School nurse: note from me for her help w/ a safe school year
I also wrote notes to the principal and to the preschool director for the district, both who helped us lots with allergy stuff at the beginning of the year.
P.S. I LOVE book thongs (I think Astarte mentioned them) and included those in holiday gifts for the teachers. Can’t imagine someone who wouldn’t appreciate one of those.
I teach 4th grade, and other than nice notes, which I love and save, gift cards are great – I now have a nice little stash of $5 here and $5 there to fun places like B&N, Dunkin Donuts, Ben & Jerry, etc. Those will be fun treats all summer! I’ve also had room moms take up a donation from families which translated into a $50 gift card to a local restaurant, which was VERY nice as well. A few others I like are a book donation to our classroom library (books walk off like you wouldn’t believe, and I don’t have the heart to police them…if a kid wants a book that badly, fine), flowers, and some goodies.
One note about the goodies, though – many teachers (and people in general, I realize!) are trying to be health conscious, so an onslaught of cookies, brownies, candy, isn’t always as fully appreciated as random treats here and there during the year would be. I don’t have a “throw it all away” rule, but there are some kids who, while I love them dearly and truly appreciate the effort, I know they made the things themselves and don’t come from homes with particularly clean kitchens. In that case, I will usually either taste it in front of them, rave about it, then “save” it for later. (Hope that makes sense, Christina, and doesn’t sound too heartless! I truly do appreciate the thought, maybe more so from these kids because of the effort I know it took.)
My own kids stay at a nursery while I teach, so at the end of the year, I usually donate a book to the class, or a subscription to Wild Animal Baby. I usually give an ornament at Christmas time, which is one of my favorite things to get from students. I save them and remember the child each year when I hang the ornament!
Also, I wouldn’t say an end-of-year gift is expected, or even all that common. I usually get a little something from maybe half of my class. A lot of my kids are economically disadvantaged and I truly don’t want them spending money they don’t have on me. I teach because I love them, not for the apple coffee mugs!
My daughter’s preschool had a week of doing special things for the teachers… all of which I missed. So on the last day I wrote both her teacher and the assistant thank you cards and put in $10 gift cards to Starbucks.
At Christmas I had her make handmade cards to give to them, and I wrote mid-year thank you Christmas cards.
Now, my sister is teaching at an American school in Kuwait, with Kuwaiti students. And for some of her end-of-the-year gifts she received: a Coach purse, a diamond ring, and a Rolex. There may have been others, too, but I haven’t talked to her since the day before yesterday. She’s not going back next year but mentioned that she might consider it for those gifts.
I generally spend about $15 on each of my daughter’s teachers. We gave her 1st grade teacher some personalized stationery (from Current, so not too spendy). Her dance teacher, who she’s had for four years, got a pretty reed diffuser (on sale at Kohl’s). I don’t know how well the stationery went over, but the diffuser was very well liked. I have given gifts to the religion teacher too, but this yer the girl really rubbed me the wrong way so I passive/aggressively “forgot.” We generally do gifts at Christmas too, and always give the school teacher daffodils during the American Cancer Society’s fundraiser each spring. I’m already wondering what we’ll do next school year because we’ve requested a male teacher and I have no idea what to get him! I think we’ll have to go the Barnes & Noble route, although I hate to give something that has a clear $$$ amount on it (don’t want to seem too cheap, or too generous!).
Jeanne
I am a Kindergarten teacher…my favorite gift EVER was a handwritten card from a parent saying that she thanks God everyday for having me be a part of her son’s life. Really? She thanks God for me??? Wow! That may only work if you are sincere though…:)
Other thoughtful gifts are gift cards to places like bookstores (that’s what I got my own kids’ teachers), coffee shops or office supply stores. We actually have to buy our own paper for use in the classroom now so office supply store cards are really great.
I also enjoy these chocolate-covered apples from a local ice cream shop in our area. Soooo good!
We are giving a magnetic sock monkey for classroom decoration (she collects them). 17 bucks…bought in March when kiddo saw it and HAD to have it.
Will write a note too.
i bought a nice planter pot (about 3.99 at our local thrift store but probably $10 at the real stores) 3 chrysanthemums and 3 lobelias and planting dirt and made a summer planter for her. we also gave her an apple tree sprout that connor had started from a seed from a granny smith apple this winter. for christmas i went to world market and got her a 12 pack of beers from around the world.. and this is a lutheran school! i think it was her best gift!
Kris–a 12 pack of beer is GREAT!!! I love that idea.
I chip in for the class gift and then also give something small like Ghiradelli chocolates and a note.
My mom was an elem teacher and a couple times she said parents would tell her ahead of time that they were making her dinner the next day. Then, they would bring up an entire dinner to school that she could bring home and serve her family. That is such a cool idea!
I found out Tuesday (1/2-way into our 2nd week of summer vacation) THAT MY 12-Y/O SIXTH GRADER DID NOT GIVE HIS TEACHER’S THEIR EOY GIFTS. I AM LIVID. BTW, they were $5 Sonic cards with $5 badge holders for the girl teachers and $10 Dunkin Donuts cards for the boys.
So what do you do if you really didn’t like the teacher this year? I’m very torn about this particular teacher and the EOY gift. It wasn’t the actual “teaching” it was the “beside manner” (for the interest of not writing a novels worth of comments). Do you just skip it, do you give something generic and of lesser value…I really don’t want to reward this person for doing nothing more than the bare minimum…..oh so confused.
I bought my daughter’s two preschool teachers each a plant (approx $12) and a package of Hershey Kisses that said “Thank You” on them. The teachers were excellent and Emily LOVED them.
Next year she’ll be in a school-district sponsored pre-kindergarten class. I know that they took a collection this year and made the teacher(s) a scrapbook. Not sure how much of that I would participate in. Probably the scrapbook, not so much the collection.
I’ll probably make some cookies. Fun for me, cheap & they don’t collect dust on a shelf somewhere. :)
I’d love another post asking teachers what they think of slobs like me who never give gifts. It’s not like they can treat my kid unfairly after that.. but will it affect future kids? Will you really think I’m a loser when I’m really just avoiding giving you extra crap to store? I’m going the “thank you note/cc supervisors” route where appropriate, but giving gifts to teachers is getting just as out of hand as tipping everybody for everything hehe. (I have 3 kids, and not a lot of money, see.)
I’ve got one in daycare/preschool and we usually do cash (about $20 a the winter break and $30 at the end of the year for the main teacher – a bit less for the aid). I’m sure as I have more kids that amount will decrease. My mom and sister are teachers and they have so much CRAP from kids over the years. I will always go with cash or a GC to a place I know they frequent. Also – this year they will get more because they tacked potty training for us :)
Seems as though I am in the minority here. I didn’t do anything for my sons’ teachers. I just don’t understand giving gifts to someone for doing their job. I’m not sure I want to teach my children to expect gifts for doing their job. I would be more than happy to help my sons make homemade cards for them if asked but neither asked.
I teach 4th grade. We know our students’ families have less money than ever, but it’s still important to let your children’s teachers know they’re doing well. It’s a thankless job in a discouraging world, and a simple note can make a huge difference in keeping a good teacher in the field.
I think gifts for teachers are great, but especially if the child makes it!
This is a little tough to say, because it seems like it’s going to come out wrong. I always vote for teacher pay increases and I think teachers take a lot of crap from a lot of people.
But I also think that attitude has gotten out of control. Teachers go into their profession on purpose, and they get paid a wage they agreed on for doing that job.
I’m a retail clerk. Talk about thankless. I deal with crap all day long. But we don’t have Retail Clerk Appreciation Week, and my customers don’t bring me presents at holidays, and I don’t get annual letters of thanks and appreciation. I’m not saying I should, and in fact that would be weird. But I think it’s also weird to do all that for just teachers, or to act as if teachers are the only ones who are underpaid, underthanked, and overworked. There are lots of worse jobs with less pay/appreciation.
I agree with you, Amy — but only up to a point. The difference between teachers and most other professions is that a teacher is responsible for children. That is key, in my opinion. I’ve worked as a fast food worker myself, and a more thankless job is hard to find. For retail workers, and other service-related industries, I do my best to remain polite, patient, and understanding, and I always say ‘thank you’. For my children’s teachers, on the other hand — I’ve entrusted my child to that teacher and having a shirt rung up or a cheeseburger made just doesn’t compare. A gift card, a note of appreciation, a small gift are all appropriate ways of thanking that teacher for the work s/he has done.
I don’t think it’s about a teacher’s paycheck, either. I think showing appreciation would be appropriate even if teachers were paid in proportion to the work they do and the service they provide. Other than my parents, I can think of no other individuals who have had a greater impact on my life than the teachers I have had. I really can’t say the same about the nice cashier at Target.
AlienBea, you’re right and I agree, which is why I always give gifts to the teachers and daycare workers. I think I just got upset when I saw all those teachers write about the presents they receive as “crap” or talk about how thankless their job is when I’m trying to thank them. I make less money than they do and suddenly it didn’t seem worth the effort if they’re just going to throw it in the trash and feel burdened by it.
I have three children in daycare and I work as an assistant in the preschool program at their school. Between my kids I have 7 teachers to buy gifts for and I usually buy something at Christmas, birthdays and end of the year. Yes the price does vary on the teacher and what I feel they have contributed to my child.
I like GC because I feel they get the most use out of them, however the most I have ever given to one teacher was $25 and that was because I knew she was spending TONS of money out of her own pocket for classroom items.
I also donate items such as games, crafts, specialty supplies during the year. I know how much the teachers are spending out of their own pocket so I always grab stuff when I see it on clearance.
I have been a teacher for 18 years and I have 4 daughters (2 in college, 1 in high school and 1 in middle school.) Being appreciated is so very nice and a note (positive one and copied to the administration) is always so nice to have. Or gift cards ($5 is great) or a large group gift card (couls be a visa gift card.) Everything is appreciated, including homemade foods and gifts, but it really needs to come from the heart! One of the things I love the most about teaching is, seeing former students and them WANTING to talk to me and give me a hug. That is the best ever!
I’ve been a preschool teacher for 20 years. Gifts vary with the times and the diff schools that I’ve worked at. I’ve gone from no gifts to many. I appreciate everything I may receive no matter if I have 20 already. I don’t think that I’ve thrown any homemade food away, but agree unfortunately from some households you must. Commenting on what Erica said I know I’m doing my job but waiters do their jobs and still get a tip. I have screamers, wetters, whiners etc. not to mention some parents that make things very difficult. The first few months are rough and by the end of the year you wouldn’t recognize them. From some of the comments I’ve read it doesn’t seem like a lot of people, even Mom’s, get what teachers go through. Like that one post said, ‘It consumes our life’ though we love it with all our heart. I’ve been teaching since I graduated high school and took my first 12 units and haven’t stopped. Everything I do & everywhere I go my husband hears the comments, ‘Oh, I need this or that for preschool’. I’m also a Mom and when my son was in
1st grade I gave a few little gifts but after a few months of school I didn’t hesitate to stop and didn’t give anything more all year. I love giving and thinking of thoughtful gifts even more than receiving them. I love surprising my kids teachers. But that teacher was not good and it was not a good year. My kids are now ending K and 2nd and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE their teachers. I volunteer when I can and give them little goodies and gifts for every reason that I can think of because they deserve it and I appreciate them incredibly. The gifts I give are usually a combination of dollar store items (you can find some really cute things and I’m picky. I will not give cheesy looking stuff.) I combine these with other discount and homemade items. When it’s a gift that I want to add more umpf to I will add a amallish gift card (Christmas and End of the Year). Fun and easy ideas: A shamrock plant for St. Patrick’s Day. An ornament @ Christmas. A beach bag, towel and book store gift card for EOY. Their are so many ideas that are meaningful and inexpensive but not cheap.