Hello Wednesday! Has anyone checked their calendars lately? And did you do a double-take (as I did) when you realized just how quickly the last day of school is approaching?!? T-minus 15 (school) days and counting, according to my little guy on Monday, which translates to just over two weeks until school is out for the summer. That’s a bit late for our typical school year and I know a lot of schools are finishing up even sooner than that. So in the interest of being on the ball, ahead of the game, and all of those other clichés that help keep me from feeling stressed, I wanted to put together a fun little end of the year gift for the teachers – and do it now rather than later.
The first place I always turn for inspiration is my Pinterest Boards and it wasn’t long before I ran across this great printable Bucket List tag. So cute – and half the work is already done for me! So I printed it out and took a quick trip to the dollar store.
Don’t you just love the dollar store? I never leave there with just the items on my list, but I sure do have fun while I wander – and my kids or husband usually get some fun treat out of the deal. For this project I simply let myself wander, repeating the thoughts “summer…bucket list…summer” as the kids and I wandered through the store. In the end my collection included a fun pair of sunglasses, sunscreen, Sunny-D (catching the theme here, aren’t we?), a bag of gummy bears (Tyler’s pick for his teacher when I told him we needed a treat to add to the bucket), and some small buckets.
*the dollar store is my absolute favorite place to find inexpensive containers for gift baskets.
It looks pretty good all put together doesn’t it? Hopefully the teachers will like it and if not, they’ll still appreciate the sentiment.
I had purchased the buckets in a set of three so I had one leftover after putting together the two teacher gifts. I decided it would be great to use for a little Bucket of Fun for my kids on the last day of school. I wasn’t sure what I wanted in the bucket so I took a look at what I’ve done over the past few years (I wrote a blog post about some of our traditions last year. You can find it HERE)…then decided that wasn’t really helpful since my kids already had those items. 😛 So plan B was to just let things jump out at me and it worked great. One day at the grocery store I ran across those Milk Magic flavoring straws – Cotton Candy flavored! That’s something I knew my kids would love to try, so I picked them up. Another day Tyler was with me at the store and spotted the Slushies on the shelf. I told him we didn’t need them that day, then when he turned around I snuck them into the cart under the vegetables. And this past Sunday the bubble wands caught my daughter’s eye while we were looking for a birthday gift for a girl in Tyler’s class. 12 years old and she still thinks bubble wands are fun – great! So I let her grab the 5 pack, gave two to the kids to use that afternoon, put one in the birthday gift, and kept the other 2 for the bucket. Perfect.
Bring on the last day of school because we are now ready for it! Are you?? Maybe not, but just think of all those days we might be able to sleep in a bit instead of rushing out the door to school, and no homework and… 😉
For more Last Day of School (or teacher appreciation) gift ideas or End of School traditions with the kiddos feel free to check out:
–End of the Year Teacher Gifts in a Cup (my most Pinned blog post on Pinterest for the past month!)
–Super Powered Teacher Gift
–Crazy Cool Teacher Gift (this one was for Valentine’s Day but I think a “stay cool” spin on this idea would be awesome)
-my Last Day of School Traditions over the past few years
Linking to: R&R Wednesdays, Home Matters Linky Party,
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