BB Part 7 - Tropical Volunteer Gifts

It's time for part 7 of my 10 part series, Blog Backlog: Playing Catch Up. Today I am sharing another fun idea for volunteer gifts.

This year I was so lucky to have three amazing moms who came in regularly to help make copies, prep projects, and do almost everything I asked! I wanted to show my appreciation with something cute. Last year I made my volunteers these awesome Out of this World gifts, but I was in the mood to switch things up this year. 

I was browsing Dollar Tree and they have a whole tropical/island section for summer. I picked out three tiki cups, some flower leis, and umbrella straws. While looking around some more I found these adorable battery operated string lights that had colorful flowers on them. I knew these would be a great addition!

I placed everything in the cups, including the string of lights, and topped it off with a Jamba Juice gift card (obviously they need something cold and refreshing to put in those cups!). 

I also found plain paper gift bags and foam Hibiscus flower cut-outs at Dollar Tree, so I glued them on for a themed gift bag! Not including the gift cards, each gift came to about $4 each! Not bad! 

BB Part 3 - Rubber Duckie Gifts

It's time for part 3 of my 10 part series Blog Backlog: Playing Catch Up! If you missed out on previous posts you should definitely check out part 1 on our state mobiles and part 2 on Go Noodle!

Today I'm sharing one of my favorite things...gifts. I love creating cute thank you gifts for the amazing people who give so much of themselves to work and volunteer for our kids. Some of the past gifts include: thank you cubes, out of this world space themed gifts, and flower cards.

For the past two years I have been teaching the 5th grade intervention math. Most of the kids have an IEP or just struggle with math. We are lucky to have a wonderful para and resource teacher who come in three days of the week to work with us. Last year these awesome gals got calculator cards and fun flexible calculators. This is even a freebie in my TpT store!

Since I had the same lovely ladies this year I needed something different. I was wandering around Dollar Tree and stumbled upon some cute rubber duckies. I immediately had the song, "Rubber Duckie you're the one..." in my head. My next thought was, hey, I could replace "bath" with "math", and this new gift was born. 

Each gift basket includes: cards from each student, two rubber duckies, a loofa, a bottle of bubbles, a lavender bath soak, and a gift card to Bath & Body Works. Most of the items I found at Dollar Tree!

I found a cute image of a bath with a duckie in it and just used that as the cards that students wrote on. The front of the cards says "Mrs. White, you're the one! Making MATH time oh so fun! Mrs. White we're especially fond of you!"

Inexpensive, cute, fun and full of gratitude! That's my kind of gift! There will be another volunteer gift post coming up in my 10 part series! Stay tuned!

*FREEBIE* A Gift for Volunteers and Awesome People

The past couple of years I have been teaching our intervention math class. This group of students includes those with IEPs and ones that just struggle with math. It's a small group, and we have the pleasure of getting extra help from teachers/paras during the week. Last year, my students and I made these calculator thank you notes at the end of the year to show our appreciation. I found some fun calculators that were bright and flexible to attach. The students wrote a sweet note on the fun calculator cards (that say things like "all your help really adds up") and I used our binding machine to put them together in a cute little book.

The calculator cards are free in my TpT store...go get them and make some fun gift of appreciation for the awesome people you know!

Out of this World Volunteer Gifts

I had the two most amazing volunteers this year! I could always count on them to come in each week to make copies and put together projects. I am going to miss them tremendously next year! I like putting together cutesy themed gifts for my helpers. Last year I put together a "summer fun" basket with some fun items.

This year I wanted to include something from LUSH. If you have never had a LUSH product you are seriously missing out. Their bath and body products are handmade and vegan. They have awesome bath bombs and soaks! I had seen some bubble bath wands around Mother's Day, but unfortunately they were exclusively for Mother's Day and had no more left when I went in. As I was browsing I saw these little Out of this World gift boxes and I knew my theme! I had so many idea of things to include with their gifts, but left several stores without the stuff I wanted to include.

I ended up getting dark blue gift bags and putting star stickers all over them. Inside I included the LUSH gift (which smelled divine and I got a heavenly whiff every time I walked past them), a starry notebook, a star post-it pad, glow-in-the-dark star glasses, and a STARbucks gift card.

To cutesy them up I bought this adorable clip art from ReviDevi and added some spacey sayings:

* You are out of this world!

* You're a STAR!

* You ROCKet!

* Thanks for helping us BLAST off this year!

* I couldn't PLANET without you!

Volunteer Gifts

The art curriculum in our district is not taught by teachers, instead we have parent volunteers come in and teach monthly lessons. This year I had two wonderful moms who did an amazing job with my class! This week was our last lesson. I put together a Pinterest inspired thank you card/gift for them. 

It was really easy to put together. I just traced some petals onto colorful cardstock and the kids wrote a lovely thank you note and cut them out. Then I threaded them onto a large flower brad, swirled them around, and hot glued them onto some wooden dowels. Easy peasy!