'T' Is For Teacher

This week was Teacher Appreciation week. Yay!

Through my previous experience training to be a teacher, I know that most teacher's loath stuff like this. Sure, they love the thought of appreciating teachers. Everyone should appreciate teachers. But teachers hate the gifts. At least the ones I spoke candidly with said so. They have closets full of these little nick knacks. Years and years of accumulated stuff. Noddle frames with pictures of little Johnny. Fifteen year old glitter drawings from a little girl they can maybe remember if they tried really hard. I don't mean to misconstrue how important teachers take their jobs or that their kids don't mean anything to them. The problem is that parents usually don't think about the reality of these gifts.

So, first I waited to see if Teacher Appreciation week was even something acknowledged at Abby's school. Cuz if other parents weren't going to do anything than neither would we. (To show my appreciation at the end of the year, I planned on writing to the teacher and thanking her in a loooong letter.) But on Monday, Lee reported that other children were coming in with little gifts.

Fine.

We decided to do something semi-home made, something Abby could contribute a part of, something simple that emphasizes the "thought" of being appreciated, and something easy and cheap. So we made a tea wreath.

This picture was borrowed off the net. I didn't get the chance to snap a picture of our wreath before Abby took it in. Bummer. Ours looked extremely similar only more yellow and orange coloring...



It was super simple to do. We made a poster board wreath because we don't use paper plates anymore (helping to save the environment). I used some scrap pieces of card stock and scrap-booking paper to decorate the wreath. Abby decorated the clothes pins with markers and paint. We bought some additional tea to augment the tea we had. Then we glued the clothes pins to the wreath and added the tea packets. Once dried, it was sturdier than I anticipated and looked pretty good.

I also had Abby write a card. I scrounged up orange card stock, to match the over all colors in the wreath, and made a card with the letter T in the middle of a yellow circle. Then Abby wrote: 'T' "is for Teacher and this tea is for you. Thank you for being my teacher. From Abby." It turned out pretty cute and matched the wreath well.

And it was fast and easy - and cheap - and was a small sample of our appreciation for Abby's teacher. And it's something she can use. (Wouldn't tea wreaths be great as "get well soon" gifts for sick friends?)

When I was a kid, I brought in flowering weeds for my teacher... Times have changed.