Kindergarten Teacher School Supplies Gift Box #BagItForward

Whew! We’ve made it through the first two weeks of Kindergarten! Big Brother seems to be growing more comfortable & confident and we’ve worked out a new schedule at home that seems to be working pretty well. We ended this two week mark by bringing in a big surprise to his whole pod of Kindergarten teachers! I figured a box full of school supplies would be a very welcome gift, especially on a Friday afternoon! 🙂

I made this supplies gift pack as part of the Elmer’s Bag It Forward program! As a former teacher (I taught high school biology until just after Little Brother was born), I know first hand how much many teachers end up spending of their own money on various classroom materials. So, I love the idea of bagging it forward and giving back to teachers. Last year, I bagged it forward to my former colleagues with a fun bag of teacher goodies. But, with Big Brother in school now, the obvious choice was his teachers!

We headed to Walmart to get supplies (which, by the way, has a deal for a free 5×7 photo this month. Go to: Walmart.com/photo for details) and found lots of stuff. Elmer’s involvement with giving back was evident as soon as we walked in the door, with a school supply donation bin & sponsored supply list station. This year, Elmer’s is doing something extra with the free 1st Day mobile app. Right on the top of the school supply list station, there was information about the app with a QR code to download it (downloading it was really easy). The app enables parents to capture those priceless “1st day” moments and it also provides teachers a unique platform to share photos of their classrooms, school projects and more with family and friends. The concept of the app is really cool by itself. But, what I especially love is that for every photo uploaded, Elmer’s will donate one product to The Kids in Need Foundation (up to 200,000 products)! Uploading a free app & snapping a photo is a super easy way to donate to a great organization! Love that!

After spending some time sorting through the abundance of school supplies in the store, we ended up grabbing quite a few supplies that were on the requested supply list and then a few goodies just for the teachers. For more from our trip, you can check out my Google+ story here.

I packaged everything up in a large file crate. I put paper towels & tissue boxes in the crate first. Then, I filled it up with the smaller goodies–lots of Elmer’s glue (the kiddos go through this SO fast), pencils, crayons, etc. There were also adorable notepads for the teachers, pens just for them, and some candy for good measure! Once it was all situated in the crate the way I wanted, I wrapped up the whole bin with clear cellophane. Then, we tied on some kid scissors & watercolor paints on as part of the bow and attached one notepad to the front with a little note!

Big Brother and I then took it in to the whole Kindergarten pod on Friday afternoon. All the teachers were so delighted! It was fun to see their reactions and it was great for Big Brother to have that interaction with them! They seemed to love everything so much! Will YOU (or have you) Bagged It For­ward?!

For more Bag It Forward ideas, check out this Pinterest board. And, for more from Elmer’s follow them on Facebook and/or Twitter

Disclosure: I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and and Elmer’s.  #BagItForward #CBias #SocialFabric. As always, all opinions & experiences are my own.