Homemade Teacher Gifts and Circus Party Ideas

Yesterday was the last day of school for my older two children and I am so glad. I am looking forward to a fun summer.

I always like to give their teachers a small gift at the end of the year and found several great ideas online. I gave the kids some choices and here is what they gave their teachers yesterday.

I originally saw this idea at The Idea Room. They used a disposable water bottle, but I chose to buy reusable water bottles. They were only $1.50 each which made them very affordable. Plus, we liked the bright colors.

To make the tags I cut a piece of yellow construction paper into thirds, so that I had 3 pieces of paper that were 4 inches x 12 inches. About 1/2 inch from the top I made a hole in the middle.

I printed out the pockets I made and attached them on the sides and bottom to the yellow paper using glue tape. (You can download and print the tags I made by clicking the link below.)

My kids signed the tags and then we inserted two lemonade drink packets in the pocket. I unscrewed the lid (remember these were empty bottles) and put the hole in the tag over the opening and screwed the lid back on.Teacher Water Bottle Tag

I also bought some bottles of hand sanitizer for each teacher. I saw the idea for this at The Idea Room and thought they would be practical yet meaningful. The instructions said to print the labels on transparency film and insert them into the bottle.

I didn’t have any transparency film, so I just printed the sayings on regular copy paper. I opened the file found here, added a text box in Word, and put each teacher’s name in it. Then I printed them, cut them and glued them to the bottle. (I first peeled the label off of the front of the bottle.) I added a ribbon and that was it.

Yesterday I also helped with my son’s end of the year class party. It was a circus/carnival theme. I thought that the little boxes of animal crackers that are circus themed would have been so cute as a treat. However, at $1 each I simply couldn’t afford to spend $35 in cookies.

So, I decided to buy 2 large bags of animal crackers and divide them into snack sized baggies. I then made a bag topper and attached one to each bag using staples. (You may download and print the bag topper by clicking the link below.)

I maybe spent $5 to make 40 bags of animal crackers. A much better price for this frugal old mom. 🙂

Circus Bag Topper

Sometimes I have to watch what I say because I never know what will come of it. You see, when I was talking last week with the mom who was in charge of the party she asked for some ideas.

I said it would be neat to have someone make balloon animals or to let the kids try to make their own. She suggested I get some balloons and see what I could figure out.

Well, I found a book at the library called Balloon Sculpting and figured out a few things.

I figured out how to make a dog, a giraffe…

…and swords. I also learned how to make balloon hats. Because of time constraints and the fact that there were 35 first graders meant that I only had time to make hats for each child during the party.

I didn’t even get a picture because I was blowing up balloons and turning them into hats at a frenzied pace. The thing that saved me was a balloon pump I purchased when I bought the balloons.

If I were to do this again I would have blown up all of the balloons (and a bunch of extras) ahead of time so that the children could have tried to make their own. However, it was fun and the kids seemed to like their balloon hats.

Side note: While the balloons pictured may look like I knew what I was doing, don’t call me to do any parties anytime soon. 😉