PhotoStory

So it's that time of year when you are short on time and money and you have 1 day to thank your teacher for the countless hours she has spent with your child. My favorite gift to give teachers for Teacher Appreciation Day is a PhotoStory. It is meaningful and something they can always pull out on days they are questioning their job and their sanity. PhotoStory is a FREE Microsoft program that basically creates a slideshow from pictures you import. My friend "G" who is the BOMB when it comes to the coolest most meaningful gifts introduced it to me. You can add recording to the photos, text and music It's very easy to use and it creates a CD-ROM file for playback on a computer. If you want to burn a DVD you have to purchase a patch from Microsoft for about $20 in order to be able to burn the file as a DVD.

Below I have published the PhotoStory I made for my daughter's teacher this year (only out of respect and privacy I deleted photos of the other students). I try and do these every year and I have yet not to have a teacher in tears by the end. I usually ask the children what they love about their teacher or what their teacher has taught them this year and I LOVE the responses I get. My favorite this year was the little boy who said he loved his teacher because she was his best friend. Two years ago I had a Kindergartner tell me her teacher taught her four letter words:) You can just have pictures without recording the children's voices or you can have the children's responses without music. It took me about an hour and a half to complete taking the student photos and recording their responses for the CLASS. You could just complete a PhotoStory from your child with all the different things they love or have learned from their teacher. You could even take pictures of the different work or projects or books that they completed this year. ALWAYS get permission from administration at the school, permission from the parents as well as a media release. Below are the links to download PhotoStory yourself and the form that I use to send home.



Here's the link to download Photostory:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

Sample Letter to Class:
Hi everyone! Teacher Appreciation Day is fast approaching. This year Teacher Appreciation Day falls on Wednesday, May 5th. We are planning opportunities for both the children AND the parents to show their appreciation. I will be working with children that have signed media consent/release forms* on a slideshow for Ms. D. This slideshow will consist of either a picture that you choose and e-mail to me or a picture I take of each child. I will then come in sometime next week and record each child (that has a signed media consent/release form*) answering the question, “What do you appreciate about Ms, D?”. On Teacher Appreciation Day, the children will present this DVD slideshow to Ms. D.

If you are not sure that you have a signed media consent form or chose not to sign the school media consent form but would like for your child to participate in this project please sign the form attached and return it to school in a sealed envelope with my name on it. Thank you!!

MEDIA CONSENT FORM
I, __________________________________(print your name) do consent to allow _________________________________(print your child’s name) picture and voice recording to be used in the making of a slideshow DVD for Ms. D’s teacher appreciation gift.

________________________________ _____________
Sign your name Date

Hospital Stay Survival Kits

If I ever have a friend or family member spending time in the hospital I try to take them some sort of "survival basket". These will usually include snacks for the waiting room or for the patients room (to save money on vending machines), mints, card games or magazines. If you happen to have a teacher who is having a baby and you have no idea what to get them consider doing a Labor & Delivery basket. These have always been well received when I've given them and they are easily customized to each mom. The teacher I gave one to today is having her 4th baby and it's a scheduled C-section. She's been around the block and probably knows best what to pack herself so I concentrated on giving her little extras that she may not have time to pamper herself with.

For first time moms I usually include slipper socks, a shower puff, shower gel & lotion from Bath & Body works (because the first shower after delivery is the BEST one you've ever had) and some sort of prayer book for moms (with really cute prayers like "Dear God today I feel grubby and am still in my pj's at 3pm"). I usually ALWAYS include a pillow case, thank you notes, a notebook, a gift card to the closest fast food place near the hospital because these are always items that can be used! What items do you like to include in hospital gifts you give?

Granola Recipe

I decided this week to send in breakfast food for the kids to eat before they started the CRCT test. Sometimes children may have not had a chance to eat or are hungry once they get to school and this ensures they start the test on a full stomach. Today I sent in homemade granola. This is a very simple recipe, that's cheap to make, kids love it and it is sweetened with only coconut and honey. People are always very impressed that you can make your own granola (until they see how very simple it is;). Below is the recipe. It's possibilities are endless because you add whatever you want to it! I will say that my family, and myself included, are not big fans of coconut. When I say "not big fans" I mean my husband won't touch the stuff. However when you toast it as in this recipe, it changes the taste and texture. My husbands eats this granola by the fist full - reminding me how much he hates coconut;)

Homemade Granola
4 cups old fashioned oats
2 cups sweetened coconut
1 cup slivered almonds (optional - I did not use these for the batch I made today due to nut allergies)
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk oil & honey together. Pour oil/honey over the dry ingredients and toss with you hands until evenly distributed. Pour out on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 40 minutes stirring the granola every 10 minutes to make sure the top pieces don't burn and it gets evenly toasted. Let granola cool and then you have to break it apart. You can then add 1 bag of chocolate chips, or dried fruit or peanuts or whatever else you would like! It makes a ton so there's always some to share!! Ina Garten also has a great granola bar recipe if you are interested. Enjoy:)

CRCT Snacks & Treats

So for those lucky enough to live in Georgia we have the dreaded CRCT testing coming up over the next two weeks. Most room parents are asked to help with snack. I usually send a letter asking parents that like to help to send in breakfast items such as granola bars, raisins, bananas, clementines, etc. - anything that is NOT loaded with sugar or artificial colors (i.e. NO pop tarts, NO rice krispy treats, NOTHING to give the kids a huge rush of sugar right before the test). This gives the teacher a stash of items to offer children who may have missed breakfast (and also a stash of items if the picky eaters don't like snack that day).
Snack time during the CRCT is strictly timed and goes by fast. For snack each day I find that it's easiest on the teacher and the children if I "pre-package" a snack. This way less time is spent dispensing the snack and more time is allotted to the children to eat. I only send in foods that are natural - absolutely NO high fructose corn syrup, no artificial colors or sweeteners. The children need a balanced healthy snack that will allow them to do their best. Also I try my best to pre cut or pre peel any fruit so they don't use their snack time trying to get their food ready to eat or worse have to sit and wait on their teacher to help them.

Below is my planned schedule of snacks next week. I will pre-package these items in 20 individual ziploc sandwich bags and the send these items in a large cooler bag to school each day with my daughter. Last year I sent my 1st grader on the bus every day like this and she had no issues (in case anyone is curious).

This year's snack:
Day 1 - Homemade Mini Blueberry & Mini Banana Muffins, String Cheese, Carrots and Clementines (peeled and sectioned)
Day 2 - Annie's Cheddar Bunny Crackers, Organic Yogurt, Celery Sticks and Strawberries (hulled)
Day 3 - Pretzels, Cheddar Cheese Squares, Apple Slices & Grapes and Cucumber
Slices
Here is how I packaged the snack so it was easy for the teacher to hand out quickly and easy for the kids to open:

Smarty-Grams
My SIL has been a Kindergarten teacher for the past 10 years and she is a great resource for ideas. She suggested I send in "Smarty-Grams" this year to the kids. Since I'm banning HFC from the snacks I'm sending in I will allow this minor infraction to be distributed at the end of the day (if SG's teacher does:). It's just a pack of smarties with a little encouraging note attached. Below I've listed what I'm going to write each day. My SIL's school actually let's the parents send in their own notes to attach but I'm too OCD and don't have time for that. You can cut out paper and make "SMARTY PANTS". You could also choose a different candy - but Smarties are small and inexpensive to do (I bought a bag of 65 for under$2.50 at Target today). Please post what testing treat ideas you have!



Testing is also extremely hard on the teachers and we rarely stop to think about that. To think that they are sitting there watching all these little kids who are basically holding the teacher's job performance indicator in their little #2 pencil holding hands!! This year I found an adorable sign that did break my "NO PENCIL GIFTS" rule - but it was so stinking cute I had to get it. I sent it in on the first day of testing and our teacher almost cried. She immediately hung it up so the whole class could see it all week! There are other signs with this same scripture that read "You believe in us so we believe in ourselves".

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Things are a little hectic right now getting ready for the CRCT, Spring Break and my daughter has a school play today. It's days like today when you need to know the class limits and keep it simple. So, I went with the old standby - Shamrock cookies. Below is my sugar cookie recipe. I've been told it's the best. It's really Martha Stewart's recipe and is so good because it contains the holy trinity of ingredients - butter, sugar, flour:) Enjoy!

Kimberly's (I mean Martha's) Famous Sugar Cookies:)
2 sticks of BUTTER cold & cut into pieces - do NOT defame this recipe and use margarine or any other crap product that "claims" to taste like butter!!
2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In an electric mixer cream the butter, sugar and eggs. Add vanilla (for some reason Martha always tells you to add this at the end but I find it doesn't get incorporated very well so I add mine at this point). Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together and slowly add to the bowl with the mixer on low. Mix until JUST combined. Turn out onto a large sheet of saran wrap and form the dough into a disk). Chill for at least 20 minutes in the fridge. Roll the dough out onto a floured surface and cut out cookies. Depending on the size of the cookies you will have to adjust the baking time. I have cookie cutters of all shapes and sizes and usually I bake my cookies anwhere from 8-12 minutes. I just check on them very often after 8 minutes because you don't want them to get too brown around the edges or burn. Once the cookies have baked let them cool and then glaze them.

Glaze
3 cups powdered sugar
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract - the REAL stuff (unless you want a super white glaze then use clear vanilla extract)
1/3 cup milk
Stir these ingredients together. It takes a minute to incorporate all the liquid into the sugar. If it's way to thick you can add a teaspoon of milk at a time - but you do not want the glaze too thin. If you want to add food coloring now would be the time. In this case, I used green powdered food coloring, but you can use liquid or paste food coloring if you want. Then you frost or glaze the cookies. I do this by literally laying the cookies face down in the bowl and then lightly picking it up while gently scraping/smoothing out the frosting. Lay the cookies on parchment paper so the won't stick as the glaze dries. ENJOY!!

Valentine's Day 2010

Valentine Boxes

This year my oldest daughter's teacher had the children send in a cereal box to make their valentine boxes at school. I wasn't quite sure exactly what was going to come home...but I LOVED what did!!

She basically cut the top of the cereal box off at an angle so the back was taller than the front and she had the kids paint the box red.

Then she had the children make a face out of construction paper and crayons and then glue it to the back of inside of the box so it faced out (no pun intended:). See how many Valentines the box holds!!
Then she had them cut out hands and hearts out of construction paper and glue them on the front of the box. SO CUTE! Thanks Ms. "D" - you are the BEST!!

Beside the adorable "cereal box" is my youngest daughter's Valentine box. She was asked to make a unique Valentine Box for her class. I was short on time so this was all I could come up with. We just took a container that my dishwasher tablets came in, covered it with green paper as the "stem" and then cut different sized scalloped circles to make the "petals" of the flower. Then I cut a whole in the top with a knife & scissors - and we have a "flower box"!

Cell Phone Valentine Cards

We decided to make Valentine cards this year. I found this really cute idea in Family Circle or Wondertime - I can't remember which one. To make these you will need: silver or gray card stock, white card stock and candy buttons. I had to go to a local candy store to find all the candy buttons we needed!!

You print out the children's names and the message on white card stock and cut them out. You fold the gray card stock and cut out "phones". Then from the scraps of gray card stock you cut out the antenna. And see below on how to assemble...

Here is the front of the card...

And here is the inside, the cell phone buttons are edible candy buttons!!

Valentine Treats/Snack

I usually send in a small treat for Valentine's Day and I usually send it in some sort of package that the teacher can choose to send home with the students (in case they are too hyper or too busy to eat the treat during the school day). This year I found these boxes on clearance at Target so I made a huge batch of brownies, cut them into heart shapes using a cookie cutter and then put them in the boxes. They LOVED them!!

Appreciation Gifts

So I haven't kept up with this blog like I've hoped - but hey I'm doing the best I can. I wanted to post a quick note on the gift I did last week for my daughter's teacher. This past weekend was our teacher's TENTH year teaching at our elementary school. I wanted to do something to express our appreciation for her because she is ADORED by everyone that's been her student (and I know this because I think she's taught everyone on our street)! I always do a DVD for the teachers on Teacher Appreciation Day so I wanted to do something different for this occasion.

My good friend "G" told me about WORDLE a while back. It's this great website where you enter in words and it creates this PDF you edit and then print on paper, transfer paper, shrinky dink paper, tatoo paper - whatever you want! We've made these for grandparents, we made them with scriptures, with poems and stories the possibilities are endless! The more you repeat a word the larger it appears in the picture. To make your own WORDLE go to http://www.wordle.net/. Below is the framed picture I made for Ms. D.




I also gave her some petit fours (10, one for each year she taught) and flowers with this cute sign that I found at Walmart for under $3!





She's the best and I hope she knew it when she got her gift! If you have any appreciation gifts I hope you share them with me!