end of the school year gifts Archives

With the end of the school year quickly approaching, it’s already time to start thinking about teacher appreciation gifts and this year we’ll include this ‘Thank you for being my teacher’ print-out with a purchased gift. We’ll probably mount it on coloured card stock or put it into a pretty frame of some sort, but wouldn’t it be amazing if every child in the class made one and we had it bound into a book?! Oh my heart! A full class book would make for such a beautiful, meaningful gift.

We’re officially into the last week of school and I couldn’t be more excited about it. Miss G had another absolutely fantastic teacher this year and for that, I’m incredibly grateful. In our experience, the teacher really does make {or break} the school year, and her teacher this year certainly made her {our!!} year a positive, happy one. Despite being new to the school this year, Grae made loads of friends, was happy to go to school each day, and got to take part in all kinds of really cool process-based, collaborative, and creative projects.

While we’re still working on putting together a little gift, Grae’s had this sweet little thank-you-for-being-my-teacher printable ready to go for weeks now and I just think it’s so simple and sweet.

Here’s what you’ll need to make your own:

‘Thank you for being my teacher’ printable
a pencil & eraser
a black fine liner
coloured pencils or crayons

First, let’s start with the draft. How much or how little you support your child through the process of completing the bullet-point lists and sentences will depend on their reading and writing skills, as well as how ‘kid-made’ you want the finished project to be. In my opinion, invented spelling is awesome and perfection is overrated, but either way, the one thing I would suggest is having your little one complete the project in pencil first. This way mistakes can easily be fixed and changes can be made. You know your little one best, so sit down and work on this together, or let them do it completely independently — or a little bit of both — it’s up to you!

Once you and your little one have reviewed the draft, invite them to trace their pencil lines with a black fine liner. While this step is optional, I do think it makes kid-printing pop and the overall project look super polished.

Now that the words and drawings have been traced in black fine liner, give it few minutes to set (so it dries completely dry), then allow your child to gently erase the extra pencil marks.

Lastly, invite your little one to add some colour to their project. Of course the drawing of your child and their teacher can be coloured in, but encourage them to also colour the banners, the little arrows and even the page border.

Once it’s coloured, that’s it! Your beautiful ‘Thank you for being my teacher’ poster is ready for gifting.

Find the printable here: Thank you for being my teacher printable poster

And if your school principal is leaving like ours is {don’t even get me started – I don’t think I’ve fully accepted it just yet}, check out this ‘Thank You for Being My Principal’ printable Miss G has also been working on.