School is winding down and summer is on the horizon.
Have I mentioned yet how excited I am about summer?
Yes? Okay. Moving on…
With summer a-comin’, it’s time for lots of you to say goodbye to your child’s teacher. As a teacher myself, I thought I’d share some ideas for popular teacher gifts around my school. Even if you don’t want to spend a lot, or if your child has multiple teachers so you can’t do something big for all of them, it is still a really nice gesture to send a little thank you gift to a teacher. Even if it’s just a note. Often times, teaching is a pretty thankless job. Our students very rarely appreciate their school years, so it really means a lot to hear from a parent that your classroom has made a difference because at the end of the day, that’s really all a teacher wants – to make a difference to someone.
Here are a few fun little gift ideas for teachers, organized by category:
Gift cards are a super choice because they are easy for you to buy and fun for your teacher to spend. But if you can make it personal, it makes it seem more like a thoughtful gift than an “I-am-giving-you-money-because-you-taught-my-kid-to-read” gift. Try to connect the location of the gift card to your child or the teacher’s subject in some way. As an English teacher, I have my own class library that I personally buy books for. A Barnes and Noble gift card would be perfect for my classroom. A teacher supply store card is pretty great, too, since most of us have to purchase our own classroom decor and necessities with our own money. My favorite gift card, though, is for an office supply store because in my school, we have to buy our own ink cartridges and reams of paper that we use for the year. Any extra help buying classroom supplies is greatly appreciated!
(SIDE NOTE: If you’re wondering what supplies your teachers have to pay for, simply call the front office and ask either the receptionist or the bookkeeper what supplies your teachers are provided at the beginning of the year.)
1. An office supply store gift card
2. A bookstore gift card
3. A teacher supply store gift card (jackpot!)
4. A Dunkin’ Donuts gift card
5. A Starbucks gift card
6. A Target gift card
Practical but fun gifts for daily use (either in the classroom or out) are always a big hit. For a secret Santa exchange at my school one year, another teacher gave me a box full of desk supplies – paper clips, post-it notes, pencils, pens, red pens, etc. It wasn’t anything expensive, but it was all stuff that totally saved me a trip to the store for myself. Another big one I love are acrylic cups. These are pretty popular these days, so you can find them anywhere. But they are super helpful for teachers who can’t leave their room during the day to get to the drink machine. Just about every teacher I know has an acrylic cup and straw on their desk at all times. You can fill these with just about anything – candy, gift cards, tea or coffee, colored shredded paper, pencils, erasers, dry erase markers, etc. Super cute and not terribly expensive.
7. Acrylic cup filled with goodies
8. Acrylic monogrammed cup
9. Basket of small desk supplies
10. A big pack of fun colored pens, markers, or Sharpies
11. Personalized notepads
12. Personalized note cards (“From the Desk of Mrs…”)
13. Fun stamps and ink pads for grading papers (Michael’s sometimes has these in their $1 bin)
Bean and Gracie each have three teachers in their classrooms at daycare, so we really can’t afford to do elaborate or even personalized gifts for each of them. Instead, I go for clever and crafty. For Teacher Appreciation Week, I got each teacher a multipack of Extra chewing gum ($2.00 a pack at Target), printed a few clever little tags (“You’re EXTRA special to me!”), tied some curly ribbon around it and voila! A little something to tell them we appreciate what they do for our kids. I got the idea from this website and they have a lot more little craft ideas if you’re looking for something clever.
I think the trick with small gifts is to make them thoughtful and personalized. It doesn’t take a lot to make a teacher (or anyone!) feel special. Just as long as it is sincere and makes them feel like you were thinking about them.
14. Candy with a message (“OWL miss you”)
15. Personalized pencils (“Mrs. Brown’s Classroom”)
16. A houseplant (“Thank you for helping me GROW this year”)
If your child only has one teacher, or if there’s someone special you really want to go above and beyond to thank, I think summer-themed gifts are a great end of the year option. Teachers are just as excited about having summers off as students are, so most of us are ready for sunshine by the end of the school year. Themed gifts are a pretty great way to go, no matter what time of year or what theme, actually.
17. Summer survival kits (beach towel, sunglasses, magazines, sun screen, flip flops, etc.)
18. Gardening kits (gardening gloves, seed packets, spade, watering can, sun screen, etc.)
19. Summer scented goodies from Bath and Body Works
20. A gift certificate for a pedicure at a local nail salon
21. Poolside fun kit (inflatable pool float, drink coozie, freezer pops, beach towel, etc.)
Another option besides large gift baskets are to get smaller items that you have personalized or monogrammed for the teacher. These are extra awesome if they are practical gifts that are just so snazzy a teacher probably wouldn’t buy them for herself.
22. Monogrammed hand sanitizers (these are surprisingly affordable!)
23. Personalized lunch bag
24. Personalized key chain
25. Personalized lanyard for their school ID
If you’re looking for clever ideas for packaging, try giving your gift in something that your teacher can reuse in their classroom.
26. A brightly colored plastic crate
27. A solid color, simply canvas beach tote
28. A metro basket (this link is to one at Target, but I’ve found them much cheaper at Walmart and Home Goods)
29. A picnic basket
30. A wicker basket
Whatever you do – whether it is big and elaborate or small and sincere – you should know that the greatest gifts I have ever received were hand written notes. One from the student is really sweet and a great memento for a teacher, but be sure to include one from yourself as well. Parents who explain ways they have seen their child grow because of their education can articulate what a child cannot. I love knowing that parents see the same growth in their child at home as I see in my classroom. Whatever gift you give, or even if you don’t give a gift, be sure you include a note from both the child and the parent. It will make your teacher’s day!
Most of these ideas – and about a billion others – can be found on Pinterest. Either check out my “Gift Ideas” board, or search Pinterest for “teacher gifts.” You’re bound to find something that floats your boat. (For things I found on Pinterest (all of these pictures), I tried to link up today when I could, but some pictures didn’t have links available.)
Happy summer from a teacher who is counting down the days!
17May
When things are going smoothly in my life, I run out of blog fodder. Can you tell?
I haven’t had much to blog about these days because there’s been no crisis, little fighting, and not a crazy oddball emergency in sight. What do normal people blog about?!?!? I find when life is running just as it should, that’s a good time to make some small little changes. That’s a big thing for me because I used to avoid change like the plague. Now, I find myself seeking out little things to change, just to keep things interesting. Here are a few things I like to change up occasionally to keep life exciting:
Breakfast cereal – We are a Cheerios family all the way, but occasionally, I break from our Honey Nut rut and go with something crazy like fruity Cheerios or apple cinnamon Cheerios. We live large.
My perfume – I have about five different perfumes or body sprays that I wear. I wear the same one for a couple weeks, then switch. Keeps my nose on her toes.
My book genre – I am an avid reader, and I love books of all kinds – adventure, thrillers, historical fiction, young adult, non-fiction, biographies, etc. I find myself reading the same kind for a while sometimes, so then I switch it up and read something new and different. I just finished a historical fiction, and now I’m reading the last Twilight book, New Moon. They are so irritatingly stupid, but I can’t put that series down!!
My shoes – I try not to wear the same pair of shoes back to back during the work week if I can help it.
My running route – I just recently started changing up my running route, and it has made my morning runs even more fun.
Our dinner menu – At least once a week I try to have something new on our family menu. Lately, I’ve been terrible at cooking (my mind just hasn’t been focused, I think) and I have messed everything up that I try. But normally, I like to try new recipes at least once a week to keep dinner from getting dull.
My radio station – I try to change up what I listen to every couple weeks. New songs, new music, new radio personalities. It all makes my commute a little more exciting.
My blog schedule – Sometimes I blog a lot, sometimes I hardly blog. Rather than force it when there’s nothing to write about, I give myself a break and step away for a couple days. That keeps my head fresh and clear and keeps writing from becoming a chore.
My cell phone ring – Not my actual phone ringing ring, actually. I tried changing that a few times and I never recognized when my phone was ringing. But I do change up my notification sounds and my text message sounds. Right now, my phone tweets at me when I have a text and I LOVE it!
While I like to change these things up, there are some things in my life that I could never change. And when they change, my entire world becomes hectic and chaotic:
My morning routine – If I get interrupted in my morning routine while I get ready for work, it really starts my day off wrong. I have steps, people! I need to complete all my steps! Don’t interrupt me while I’m moisturizing!
My classroom layout – I never move around my stations in my classroom where kids have to do things (i.e. homework submission basket, pencil cups, class books, etc.). Kids do better when they know where to find things every day.
My spot on the couch – I sit on the left side. No exceptions. Ever. There’s a dent in that pillow that belongs to me.
Where I write – I sit in the same place and work on the same laptop with my feet propped up on the same pillow every day to do my writing. If I’m not in my exact position, I can’t focus. Weird, huh?
My kitchen cabinet arrangement – Everything has a place and I know just where that place is. If someone puts something away in the wrong spot, it drives me crazy! I am very particular about things in my kitchen.
The original scent Pine Sol – I love that smell! I have tried the other scents they make, but it just doesn’t seem clean without that lemon smell.
My make up – I very, very seldom change what make up I use. I use the the same brand, same colors, same application process every day.
What about you? What do you change in your life when you want to shake things up? What could you never change without severely altering your universe?
Ever since Chris started graduate school at Yale, I’ve had this sticker on the back of my car. It’s a simple sticker that says, “Yale University.” At first, it was a badge of honor because I thought it was so cool to actually know someone who went to Yale. After the novelty of the school wore off, I kept it on my car because I was so proud of Chris for what he had accomplished. When he graduated and started working in New York, we kept our connection to Yale through my job there, and that sticker was no longer a symbol of Chris, but of my own ties to Yale. When we moved to Florida, I debated about taking the sticker off, but decided to leave it on for nostalgic reasons. Every time I backed my car up, I’d see that sticker in my rearview mirror and I would remember that wonderfully happy time in our lives.
I took the sticker off this weekend.
Looking in that rearview mirror every day kept me in the past. Every time I looked at that sticker, it was because I was backing up. Sometimes it was backing up my car, and sometimes it was backing up emotionally. I’d look at that sticker and think about all the things I didn’t have in my life anymore. The people who we came to love at Yale, the house that became our first home, the jobs that started out our career paths, the seasons that gave us so much happiness…all of it. Every time I saw that sticker in my rearview mirror as I backed up, I’d mentally and emotionally back up a little bit, too.
This week, I was backing my car out of my parking spot at school after a particularly rewarding day of teaching that made me both proud and happy to be a teacher. I glanced at the sticker and thought to myself, “Oh! That’s still on there?” I couldn’t remember the last time I had noticed it. Probably not for months. “I should probably take that off,” I thought.
Just like that. I should just take it off.
In the past year, we have been establishing ourselves where we wanted to be in Orlando. We’ve built a life that not only satisfies me the way that our life in Connecticut had, but goes beyond that and makes me feel complete and whole. I can’t imagine my life being anywhere but here. I know where my kids are going to go to school in a couple years. I wake up every morning and drive to a job that fulfills me in ways I didn’t even know needed fulfilling. I come home to a family that is funny and happy and energetic and exhausting and constantly keeping me on my toes. I lay down at night beside the one person in the whole entire world that could give me this life. I can honestly say that I have never been this happy in my life.
You should see my house right now. It is a disaster zone. (I say that like that’s a change from the normal, every day state of my house…) But you know what I did today? I went on a glass bottom boat tour with my mom, my best friend, my grandma, and my two kids. We came home to the hustle of bath times and bedtimes and Sunday evening chores to get ready for the week. And as I sit here now, my house is finally quiet and the rush of the day is calm and if I had to give one word to my day after all that chaos it would be “happiness.” Just pure happiness. Happiness that I got to spend the day with three generations of women, all who have inspired me in ways I don’t even think they know. Happiness even though the kids were tired and grumpy when we got home and fought bedtime hard core. Happiness even though I got absolutely nothing done that I needed to for this upcoming week. Happiness even when I’m exhausted and feel like I need another weekend to recover from this weekend. It is all just happiness to me.
Running has been an unexpected joy in my life, but I think it is really the sign of something much deeper happening to me right now. With every step I run, with each early morning I rise, with each mile I clock, I am doing something that brings me happiness. For a long time, happiness was situational for me. I was happy when things were happy around me. But something in the past four or five months has shown me how to live in a state of happiness, even during times that may not necessarily be happy. On work days when I feel ineffective in the classroom, I still feel happy in my career. On days when dinner is late to the table and kids are crying and dogs are barking and Chris texts to say he hasn’t even left the office yet, I still feel happy. I feel other things that sometimes dull that happiness – frustration or exhaustion or anger – but at the end of each day, there is always happiness.
Deep, deep down in my soul there is happiness now.
Turns out, I don’t need to be constantly reminded about specific times in my life that have made me happy. I don’t need a sticker in my rearview mirror to remind me of happy days. That happiness is inside me. It goes with me. It’s there on good days and on bad days and every day in between. And when it is that prevalent in my life, when I don’t need reminders or moments that show me how happy I am, when it just comes that naturally from inside, then it’s time to take down that sticker.
09May
Yesterday we took Gracie in to get tubes in her ears. I was a little worried going into it, but mostly I was excited for her. Gracie’s ears have been such trouble for her, and I was so ready for them to be cleared up. She’s getting to the age where she’s trying to form words and we can tell that she’s having trouble doing that because she can’t hear very clearly. It was time for tubes.
We had to be at the surgery center by 6:00am, so we got the kids up and going at 5:00 and headed out. They checked Gracie in and we waited for almost an hour (which really irritated me because they made us get there so gosh darn early). The hardest part of waiting was that Gracie hadn’t been able to eat breakfast that morning, and so we made Bean wait on his breakfast, too, until Gracie went back in to surgery. Otherwise, Gracie would have been really mad. So, we had two tired and hungry kids to keep entertained. It was a little tough. I brought a backpack full of activities, so we all four sat around and played games and colored until it was time to go back.
When they finally called Gracie back, it went relatively quickly. We had to put her in a hospital gown and sit her in the big hospital bed. She was not happy with any of that. She didn’t want anything to do with the hospital. She pretty much cried from the moment we went back to the moment we left. We did as much as we could to keep her happy, but it was hard to blame her. I don’t like hospitals either.
When it was time for her to go back with the doctor, a team of nurses came to get her. Gracie had been infatuated with one of the surgical nurses from the moment we got there. I don’t know what it was about her, but Gracie just stared and stared at her the whole time we were there. Whenever this nurse came into the room, Gracie would actually stop crying and stare at her. When it came time for them to take her from me, that nurse came and got her and Gracie was so distracted by staring at this woman that she didn’t really notice that she was leaving us. I’m sure she cried when she got back to the operating room and realized we weren’t there, but I just try not to think about that…
We waited for about 15 minutes and then the doctor came out and brought us back to a little private waiting room to tell us about the procedure. She said it went well, but that Gracie’s ears looked awful when she was in there. There was so much fluid in them and both her eardrums were inflammed. The doctor said she cleaned and drained everything out, but she still put her on an antibiotic and ear drops to clear up any infection. Overall, though, she said it went great.
“She’s a feisty girl!” the doctor told us.
The nurse told us that Gracie might be sensitive to sound for the next couple days because she isn’t used to hearing at full volume. They told us to try to keep things a little quiet that day to help her adjust. With two dogs and two small kids, our house is anything but quiet. Turns out, Gracie ended up being the loudest of them all! By 10:30 that morning, Gracie was back to her normal self. She was babbling, yelling, laughing, playing, walking, and just generally enjoying life with her newly improved ears.
So far, she has been perfectly fine with her tubes. The only time we’ve noticed anything different was this morning. Normally, Gracie is the last of the family to wake up in the mornings. We all get loud with getting dressed and having breakfast around 6:30, but Gracie sleeps through that and doesn’t wake up until I go in and get her until 7:00. But this morning at 6:30, I heard her start crying in her crib, which was another difference because she never cries when she wakes up. I found her sitting in her crib, mad as anything. She wasn’t even crying, she was yelling with her hands over her ears. It was such a clear message: “WHY ARE YOU ALL SO LOUD?!?!?!?”
And then tonight, she woke up several times when the dogs started barking or when Bean started yelling, and she has never done that before. I think she is just able to hear a lot more now and it seems to make her a little bit lighter of a sleeper. I’m pretty sure she just has to get used to her new ears and then she’ll be just fine with the volume in our house.
At least, I hope so because I keep looking for a volume button for our household and I have yet to find one…
So far, the tubes have been such a blessing for little Gracie. It was a super easy procedure with so very little recovery time. I’m so happy for her. New ears are so fun!
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