End of Year Gifts: Teachers, Bus Driver & Kids

Tomorrow I officially finish my room mom duties at the end of year party.  I was lucky enough to share this job with an amazing lady that I can now call my friend!  Her and I decided that since our little kiddies don’t get much downtime at school, we would keep it ultra simple.  No planned games – just free wheelin’ playground fun!  By this time of year, we figure their attention span for directions would be next to nothing, so why not just let them play?!

As an added bonus, we decided to have bubbles, sidewalk chalk and hula hoops out for them to use too.  I was going to make new labels for the bubble bottles with cute polka dot or striped paper like the one on the left, but then I thought about it and decided to save my sanity and my time.

Sometimes you’ve got to think about your audience and if it’s worth the time when half the bubbles will probably spill and the wrappers get torn off.  So I opted to simply label each with their names to avoid any “this is mine,” “no, it’s mine” conflicts.  You know what I mean?

For teachers’ gifts, I lean towards group gift cards because it allows them to get what they want.  You know, one can only get so many apple paperweights.  However, I am a sucker for presentation, so I wanted to do something more than a card.

While I was at Target the other day, I found these adorable plastic berry baskets (a 2 pack for $4.99) and grabbed a bunch of berry and fruit items from their dollar section to fill it along with the gift card. 

Those bags were too cute to pass up, so I folded them and tucked them behind the other goodies.  Then, when they go home that day, they can jus throw the basket and goodies right inside the bag!

Got another fabulous free printable from the ladies at eighteen25 and boom, that there is some serious cuteness going on!

 

And for a fun send off for the kids, I grabbed some Kool-Aid packets (5 for a dollar) and prettied them up with yet another awesome free printable from the Preppy & Pink blog.

Threw them in cellophane bags and sealed them up with…you guessed it, washi tape. BOOM! Cheap, fun and cute – my favorite recipe!  You could add crazy straws, but I’m in the less is more mode.  I figure they get so much stuff sent home as it is.

There are a few other people I like to thank at the end of the year too.  One of them being our bus driver.  So I chipped in with another neighbor for a gift card and tied it to a Simply Lemonade with a tag reading, “Have a Simply Fantastic Summer!”

And because I’m a “worry schmurry” as my son would say, I ended up wrapping the lemonade with the gift card in a cellophane bag.  This way, should the gift card fall off the bottle, it will still be safe and sound inside the bag.

I did get risky and tape the “simply fantastic summer” tag on the outside of the bag.

I’m crazy like that.

This year has flown I think faster than any of them.  I started it out with the two bookends of the school – a kindergartner and a 5th grader…and of course my girl mixed in between them.  Now I’ve got a soon-to-be 1st grader, 3rd grader and…..MIDDLE SCHOOLER!!!!!!  YIKES!  Somebody help me.  That scares me, let me tell ya.  Middle school.  Better make this summer count before he’s too cool for family fun!