End of Year Teacher Gifts

I know I said "tomorrow" but anyone who knows me knows that "tomorrow" is a euphemism for "someday soon....I hope...I think....maybe?"

And today is that day!

Like I said in "yesterday's" post, I wanted to do something special for Ben's preschool teachers.  Not only because they are so special, but because I needed to commemorate something important.  You see, Ben's class will be the very last class, EVER, to graduate from the Wigwam.

The sweet, cozy, dear, one room schoolhouse, that is the only one of it's kind in the land of Naperville where everything is supersized...the Wigwam will be no more.  The city is building a massive, amazing, new nature center to benefit the entire area and to include two new preschool classes.  And the Wigwam is standing right on that Nature Center's parking lot.  

So the Wigwam...it is slated for demolition.  (cue the tears!!!)

Someone needed to make sure that this place is not forgotten, and that someone was yours truly.  I came up with some pretty good ideas, but what I needed was FUNDING.  So I set out to get the other parents in on a 'group gift' that I would gladly orchestrate (muahahahaha).

About half of the parents joined me, donating $10 per teacher, for a total of $200 ($100 per teacher).  Half of that money went to Visa gift cards for each teacher, but the rest went to fund my imagination.  See, I had this idea of a "Toadstool" themed gift basket, since our program at the Wigwam is called Toadstools and Pollywogs.  

I was SO HAPPY with the way it turned out!  I started out with a pot of perennial shasta daisies, a. because they are indestructible and b. because I knew the kids would be singing "I'm a little daisy" at the graduation ceremony (to the tune of I'm a little teapot) and I'd composed a poem with alternate words to the song to use as the card with the gift.  I wrapped it up in heavy duty wrapping paper (from Homegoods), tied it with a tulle bow and turned the gift card into a garden stake.

See?  A bamboo skewer left over from some fruit kabob making,
along with a strip of packing tape (which I always have on hand because I consistently forget mine at home, requiring me to purchase a new roll every time I mail anything)
...et voila!

Next I added some adorable toadstool garden chimes I found on Amazon.

The smoke and mirrors comes with the packaging...you can wrap anything up nicely and make it look like it came from a boutique.  Here's how they look wrapped up in polka dot wrapping paper (left over from two Christmases ago) with a raffia bow and some homemade gift tags (made from the brown envelopes and photo paper that came free with my printer ink)

I picked up some adorable woven baskets from Homegoods for $12.99 apiece and tucked everything inside with the piece de resistance...a framed photo of our beloved Wigwam.

I took the shot below at sunset, and then doctored it up in Photoshop.

I added a blue sky, a sunflare and a poignant title as finishing touches.

Because magic really did happen here.
(sniff)

As a finishing touch, I wrapped the basket in cellophane and tied a big red polka dot bow at the top, along with the poem I'd written.  Somehow in the INSANITY that was graduation morning, I forgot to snap a picture of this, but in my opinion, cellophane is KEY to making any gift look fancy.  It's not just for the Easter Bunny you know!

Here's a jpg of the card (I took a screenshot of the Word doc, so it's hazy) but you can take my word that it was much cuter printed out and attached to the gift with ribbon...

The fun didn't end there though, because I also had Ben's "Chidlren's Day Out" teachers Miss Marcia and Miss Jackie to thank.  Ben was only with them one day a week, but he just adored them and they had such an impact on him - he would always come home smarter and curiouser after a morning at "Knox" (the program was held in Knox Presbyterian Church, Knox for short).

These ladies were so special to Ben!
(Miss Marcia is on the left and Miss Jackie on the right)

There was no group gift this time, so I set my budget at $15 per teacher.  I gave them each a gift card plus a pretty gerbera daisy plant, all wrapped up like I'd wrapped the shasta daisies.



More cellophane and some curling ribbon I've had since Jack's 6th birthday party
(I kid you not, a big spool of that stuff lasts forever!)

The whole package was designed so I could attach this sappy card to it
(I'm a girl who loves a themed gift - I can't help it!)

From what I've read and heard from my teacher friends, the best thing you can give a teacher is a heartfelt thank you showing that you appreciate what they do each day.  The next best thing is a gift card because they have a closet full of knick knacks, pinterest-type projects and scented lotions already, not to mention more homemade goodies than one person can eat before they spoil.

Knowing my teacher friends as I do, I know that the Visa gift cards we gave the teachers this year will likely be used on their classrooms to buy things that aren't in the school's budgets...because that's how teachers roll.

As for Jack and Molly's teachers?  They got handwritten notes from the kids with a gift card.  Definitely not 'pinterest worthy',  but I think we hit the mark, and that all the kids' teachers know how special we think they are.