teacher gifts for the last-minute parent

This week, my kids are out of school, but before they busted out of those doors, we wanted to give their teachers a tiny token of our appreciation for their hard work and dedication.

But we didn’t have a whole lot of time.

We were away last weekend. We were preparing for Maddy’s 5th grade recognition this week. We are in the middle of a basement renovation. We’re finishing up spring activities and moving into summertime swim and dive.

It’s a lot.

So we had to think of something cute, clever, and quick.

Inspired by our Teacher Appreciation gifts last year, we made some pretty cool pencil holders for teachers this year, and they turned out really awesome.

In fact, we’re all quite proud of our work and think these gifts are really for anyone to make–last-minute or not.

Here’s the skinny. . .

Teacher Gifts for the Last-Minute Parent:

I always want to do something nice for our kids’ teachers because we know how difficult their job really is. But I always want their gift to be practical and useful. Bottom line.

This teacher gift for the last-minute parent is both practical and useful; it’s a lazy susan pencil holder with fun, funky words on it.

Simple. And so cute.

For this teacher gift, you’ll need:

a wooden pencil holder— you can go simple or more elaborate, it doesn’t matter. Or go for a wooden desk organizer or super-fancy lazy susan organizer
magnetic letters or scrabble letter tiles
hot glue gun

Here’s how to make it:

1. Choose the word(s) you want displayed on the pencil holder.

We chose things like school, teach, learn, listen, math, read. I wrote the ideas down on paper and then told Maddy, Owen, and Cora to choose the words they wanted on their teachers’ gift.

2. Glue the words onto the gift. Easy!

We used our hot glue gun, and though it wasn’t perfect, it did the job.

Maddy and Owen each wrote a thank you note to their teacher, a la the freebie teacher appreciation printables I created for HP’s myprintly.com blog, but Cora’s was a bit different.

I was the room parent for Cora’s class, so we did things a little differently for her teacher.

A few weeks ago, I asked each parent to have his or her child write a quick thank you note to the teacher. Once I had them all, I rolled each note separately, then I tied a yellow or white ribbon around it.

We placed each note one of the compartments and voila!

We also really upped the fun factor for Cora’s teacher.

Here’s what we did–we:

added a pretty nice gift card to a great local store;
included some cool framed teacher appreciation quotes (you can totally grab these, too!);
gave her a copy of Jessica Turner’s Fringe Hours book and notepads;
wrapped it all in a nice gift bag.