As end-of-year thank you gifts for the teachers at my daughter’s elementary school, I bought copies of one of my current favorite teaching books, Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess.
For the teachers at my son’s preschool, though, I wanted to do something a little more personal. He’s had the same head teacher for over two years, starting just a couple days shy of his third birthday, and she’s put up with all his tantrums and stubbornness and charm and humor and quirks. She knows him well and genuinely cares for him, and he will miss her.
I love blank notebooks and can never seem to have enough, so last fall I bought a little machine thing that punches holes in paper and then presses the binding to make spiral notebooks. My 6-year-old and I have made dozens of them.
So I made a notebook for each teacher. I designed a cover using a cute saying I’d seen in a bunch of places on Pinterest and Google Images (no idea who should get credit for it). And then I made a second page with an image of a coffee cup with a pocket to hold a gift card (purchasing them gave me an excuse to get a latte for myself, as I knew I’d be up late that night putting these notebooks together).
The rest of the pages I personalized for each teacher with their name. The next morning, my kids added a thank you note on one of the pages, and I added one from me as well. The rest of the pages are blank and will hopefully be something that will be useful for them.
I was pleased with how they turned out, and more than pleased with myself for actually getting them done before the last day of school!
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