Teacher Appreciation Week

I got roped into helping out on the Teacher Appreciation Week Committee at Addie's school (the committee is mostly church friends, so they already knew my skill set and schedule so I couldn't pretend I'm clueless! ;)). I found suprisingly little on the internet as far as ideas go, so I thought I would share our ideas via the blog for future reference.

First of all, this is the itinerary the committee came up with for the week:

Monday: Decorated Doors plus Muffins & Juice
Tuesday: Mailbox Treats
Wednesday: Luncheon
Thursday: Wish Tree Gift Bags & Sharpening Service

Friday: Dessert Bar

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So Saturday, as I mentioned, we got together and decorated all the teachers' and staff doors. Here are some of them:

In L-R order: "We're blowing the WHISTLEbon the two best playground aids ever", "You are the HEART of our school", "We love our teacher", "You're out of this world"(outer space theme), "Thanks You for giving us the building blocks for a great future", A huge blue ribbon for Best Librarian, "You're the KEYS to our success", "Here's the SCOOP: You're the best!", "You're SUMbody Special (w/ calculator)", "HATS off to an Awesome Teacher", Handprints with quotes from the kids that can be taken down and bound into a scrapbook, "We're LUCKY to have you for our teacher", "You rise above the rest" (balloons), "Recipe for two great Kitchen Aids/ Lunch workers", "P.E. is a BALL", "Thanks for Helping us Bloom and Grow" (flowers), "Teacher, teacher, what do YOU see? I see GRATEFUL students looking at me!" (scanned from the ever-popular Brown Bear, Brown Bear book), "You Deserve a Standing Ovation (hands clappping)" and "We're glad you're part of our STAFF" (for music teacher), "You're a FROGtastic Teacher" (a frog for each student), and the skinny one you can barely see shows caterpillars that say "You're the kind of teacher that TRANSFORMS her students" surrounded by butterflies with students' names on them.
Today I was in charge of the Mailbox treats. We bought boxes of candy bars at Costco, them tied on cute tags with the week's theme: A Teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, touches a heart, and shapes the future. James and I just got home from delivering them. The only thing I have yet to do is help bag and tag all the items that were brought in from the Wish Tree so we can give them to the teachers on Thursday. We tried to think of some kind of helpful service gift we could give them (like massage gift certificates or something), and we came up with Knife and scissor sharpening (our committee chairwoman's hubby has a mobile knife-sharpening service). The teachers will also receive gift certificates to the legendary drive-in, Mark's In-n-Out (donated at cost by the owner). That will be way-fun for them--there's nothing like a malt at Mark's on a summer day in Livingston!

For the Wish Tree we used a little plywood tree (about 40" tall) that Rich made for me to use as Primary chorister. It has little velcro dots on it and I have little numbered apples, leaves, and flowers (to use seasonally) that correspond to songs--the kids choose a leaf and we sing the song with that number. Anyway, we made paper leaves and told the teachers to write down some items they would like for their classrooms that were under $5. Then we put velcro dots on the back of the leaves and placed the tree in the school lobby with a collection box and instructions. Today was the last collection day and all but 5 of the nearly 60 leaves had been taken. I hope the teachers are pleasantly surprsied!