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Wednesday, July 6, 2016

End of the Year Student Gifts & Freebie

Hey guys!  I know I'm a little late with this, but I wanted to share what I gave my students as EOY gifts with you.

My first few years of teaching were spent in Pre-K and I would normally give my kiddos a "Summer Survival Kit" which would include things like workbooks for their next grade level, goggles, beach balls, water squirters, bubbles and sidewalk chalk all nicely packed inside of a beach bucket - shovel and all!

Now while that's all well and good, it was also very EXPENSIVE!  I still wanted to give my students something but I didn't want to spend a fortune doing it.  I also wanted to be sure that the gift I gave them would be something they could use more than once, not something that they would just throw out after a few days.  So, I thought to myself, what would be something useful that the kids can use during those hot summer days?  And then it hit me - water bottles!  I did some searching on Pinterest (of course) and I came across this pin from The Polka-dotted Teacher.  I opted not to give the kiddos the Kool-Aid packets, however.

First, I ordered these awesome water bottles from Dollar Tree.  They came in four bright colors and they were 30 to a case! Next, I needed to find a way to figure out what color water bottle my kids wanted without giving away the surprise.  So, I pulled up a blank PowerPoint slide and simply displayed the words "pink, blue, purple, green" on the SMART Board.  Then, I called the kids up one by one and asked them to look at the colors displayed on board and to list (just those colors) for me in order, from the one they like the most to the one they like the least.  I had a class list printed and ready to go, so when the kids listed their choices for me, I could just write them down next to their names.

Lastly, I printed out these adorable poems from Primary Peach and got to work on making my labels.  I used a hole puncher to punch a tiny hole in the label, then I used some ribbon to tie it around each water bottle.



When I got to work in the morning, I laid out the poems and water bottles on the kids' desks and just waited to see their reactions when they came in.





If you'd like to grab a copy of these labels for free, you can do so by clicking here.  I hope you've enjoyed this post and have found some of these ideas useful.

What do you give your students as End of the Year gifts?  I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

Thanks for stopping by!

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