Back to School Teacher Gift

Oh my good­ness! It is SUCH a big day around here– a BIG first that has this mama full of all kinds of emo­tions! It’s Big Brother’s first day of Kinder­garten!! So bit­ter­sweet! And, just like so many other mile­stones, it means that our lives will never be the same.  His baby and tod­dler­hood are no more as we now enter the realm of “school-age”. Gah! Cliche’ as it may be to say it, it went by so fast. TOO fast! And, with that thought, I’m cry­ing again…so let’s just move on to the fun back to school gift shall we?!

I LOVE how this came together! A good theme makes things so much more fun. So, I loved find­ing out that all the Kinder­garten classes at his school have ani­mal themes. His teacher’s name is “Mrs. B”, so need­less to say, they are the Bee Class! At “Meet the Teacher Night”, we dis­cov­ered all kinds of bees through­out the room!

It was a no-brainer then that we’d make her some­thing bee-themed for a gift. I just had to decide what. Then, a ran­dom find at a thrift store of a lit­tle wooden “holder” deter­mined it! What teacher can’t use another place to hold extra pen­cils (or var­i­ous other writ­ing uten­sils)? So, we got to work!

You’ll need:

• a canister/holder of some kind (wooden, tin can, plas­tic, etc.)
• black chalk­board paint
• Mod Podge
• embell­ish­ments (I used scrap­book­ing paper)
• scis­sors & paintbrush
• pen­cils (or other items to put inside)
• “Bee” gift label

Direc­tions:

- Start by paint­ing your con­tainer with chalk­board paint (accord­ing to the paint direc­tions). This was some­thing that Big Brother helped with and was quite excited to do so!

- Once dry, embell­ish the con­tainer. Orig­i­nally I had planned on using stick­ers, but I couldn’t find any with bees. So, I used some scrap­book­ing paper instead. Just like with the travel clip­boards, I just mod podged the paper onto the con­tainer. The cut out bees added so much!

- Fol­low the paint direc­tions to use as a chalk­board (I let mine set for about 24 hours and then rubbed chalk over the sur­face). Then, write your mes­sages & add sharp­ened pen­cils (or other writ­ing utensils).

- To top it off, add a cute lit­tle gift tag & attach to the pen­cils!! I came up with two options to fit the “Bee” theme! (Just click the pic­ture to down­load the print­able file)

Big Brother car­ried it in to class with him this morn­ing! He was so proud of what we made and was a nice way for him to inter­act with the teacher right off the bat! She gave him such a nice reac­tion! Then, we said our good­byes. The quote on the door (for par­ents, of course) said, “say quick good­byes & leave with dry eyes”. Now, I can’t wait to pick him up and hear all about his first day!

Happy 1st day of school!!

Linked to: *SNAP Show & Tell, *I’m Lovin’ It, *Sun­dae Scoop, *Rook No. 17