"What We Like About You" Video

This past weekend, my husband's side of the family had a short family reunion.  The last day of the reunion we celebrated my mother-in-law's 60th birthday.  We had a family party with brownies and ice cream and bingo for the kids.  As part of our gift, we made a video of the grandkids saying 60 things they liked about grandma or favorite things they do with grandma.  Each grandchild said 3 or 4 words, with props or acting out the word.  The babies who were too small to speak just held signs or a sibling said the word for them.  It turned out to be really cute.

This idea was not my own. When my mom turned 60 a short while ago, she was in Albania on a church mission (see their mission blog), and so we had to do a long distance celebration, and my sister Emily thought of this cute idea and did it with her kids.  I just stole it.  Modern technology made it really easy to get video from sisters-in-law living far away, and then I compiled it, putting the words in alphabetical order just because, and added transitions, titles, and music.

You could adapt this idea to do a video for any special birthday, anniversary, to say thank you to teachers at the end of the school year, or any time you want to let someone know how special they are to you.

This youtube video doesn't have the opening letter to grandma or the background music it originally had, but you can get an idea of what we did by watching it.  And look at the cute boy saying bubbles.  Isn't he adorable?

Teacher Thank You Gift 2011

I'm not really a cheesy person.  Not usually.  But for some reason, I always feel like I have to do something cutesy for teacher appreciation gifts.  Maybe it's because they're rather small gifts, and somehow the "cuteness" factor makes it seem like a better gift.  Or maybe I'm just giving in to peer pressure to be corny,  looking at all the other ideas around the blogging world.  For whatever reason, this is what I've come up with for this year.  (And if you're one of Christopher's preschool teachers, act surprised when he hands them out next week)

Since we had many teachers we wanted to give them away too, I tried to think of something that was not too expensive but I would have enjoyed getting if I were a teacher. (Even though we homeschool, Christopher still has like 8 teachers at preschool, and then we have all those music teachers and such we'd like to say thankyou to.)  So I chose one of my most favoritest candies, Sunkist Fruit Gems.  Have you ever had these before? I love them.   Plus, they have 25% of your daily vitamin C needs in just one fruit gem, so they're pretty much health food, right?  I bought the individually wrapped ones in a 2 lb. bag from Amazon. There were about 90 of them in the bag.

I tried to think of a cheesy saying to go with them, and this is what I came up with. "Thanks for a fruitful year. You are a gem." Unless the teachers know they are called fruit gems, they might not get that last part, but oh well.  They're teachers. They're smart. They'll figure it out.

Other fruit sayings you could use might include:
"You are a grape teacher! Thanks a bunch!"
"Thank you berry much!"
"You and teaching make a great pear!"
"Orange you glad the year is over and you can pass me off to another teacher?"

As you can see, there are so many possibilities.  I put about 7 candies in a bag, made a paper treat holder, and added a tag at the top.  I made the tag using some clipart I bought online.  I googled "cute fruit clipart" and found some for $1.00 on a website called lilly bimble.  I thought it was worth it since I would've spent more on ribbon or stickers.  I try to use up old scrapbook paper for projects such as this (I gave scrapbooking up years ago) so I used whatever green paper I had around.  I'm sure you crafty people out there could make a much cuter package.

So there you go.  Cheesy teacher gifts.

Teacher Gifts from Last Year

And More Teacher Gift Ideas

More Teacher Gifts

I received a couple of teacher appreciation gifts from some preschoolers this year, and thought I'd share their cute ideas! A little girl gave me a packet of flower seeds with a note that read "Thanks for planting the seeds of learning in my heart".

A little boy gave me two marble magnets his mom had made with the words "Thank you for magnifying your job as my teacher!"

She had used two large glass marbles that are flat on the bottom like you use for flower arrangements and can find at craft stores. She had glued some cute paper on the flat side of them so that the pattern was magnified through the glass. Then she glued a magnet on the back. Very cute and pretty on my fridge.

Teacher Thank you gifts

This year I decided to go a bit cheesy for teacher appreciation end of year gifts. I bought a 5 lb. bag of Kopper's mint cookie malt balls from Amazon.com and divided them into bags. They actually arrived a bit melted, but there were still enough to use, plus Amazon then sent me more, so we have a lot of malt balls. I added a tag that read "Thank you for being such a great teacher! Your service has "mint" a lot to us and we've really had a "ball" this year." The teachers loved them and the malt balls are delicious!