Teacher Appreciation Week

Next week is teacher appreciation week at my kids' school. Part of the package is the room mothers will make a door decoration for the teacher, expressing our appreciation for all they do. Back in December, the room mom for M's class asked me if I'd be in charge of that. I was fine with that, and accepted the challenge.

Lucky for us, yesterday was the spring party day at school. My idea for the door decoration required student participation, so one "station" at our party was working on our door decoration.

The night before, I measured out a sheet of white butcher paper to the length of the door. I took strips of brown butcher paper and wadded them up, then rolled them to look like tree branches, and attached them to the white paper. Since they had been wadded already, I figured it'd be ok to roll the whole thing up and transport it to school that way.

At the party, I gave each of the kids a green "leaf". On it, I had them write the most important thing that Ms. H had taught them that year, along with their name. Most of the responses were "multiplication tables" or "cursive". One person wrote "respect", which really made Ms. H smile. After they finished their leaf, we let them choose where they wanted to attach it to the tree, and they put it up.

After that, we made tissue paper flowers. To make those, get 5-10 sheets of tissue paper. Line them up. Then, accordian fold the stack of tissue in about 3/4" increments. When it's all folded up, staple the middle with one staple. Then, very gently, pull the tissue apart to "fluff" it up.

We let them choose colors for the tissue flowers, and then let them choose the spot on the tree for their flower to go.

Here is the finished product:

As I was leaving the school, most of the classrooms had a mom at the door, beginning her door hanging project. I could tell that everyone was going to be there awhile. As I walked past all of them and out the door, I thought, to myself, "SUCKAS!!!!!! If you make the kids do it, it is a lot quicker!!!"



As a nice aside, I was speaking with Ms. H after school. She told me she thought we seemed like so much fun, and that our family was always doing something really interesting. She had told M that he was "the luckiest boy". M wondered why. She told him that firstly, he had two parents who loved him, and cared about how he was doing, and encouraged him to be successful. Then, because we were always giving him a lot of fun and exciting things to do. I thought that was a very sweet thing for her to say. To hear M tell it, we are sooooo boring, and NEVER do anything fun. Of course, he, along with the other kids, are furious with J and I because we've canceled the camping trip because it's SNOWING at the planned camping location. A little snow never stopped our kids from wanting to camp.