Teacher Appreciation Week- Last Year

This week is Teacher Appreciation week and I'm busy trying to put something together to let the kids teachers know just how special they are to us. While pulling this rabbit out of my hat, I thought I'd share some of the cute projects from the past. Last year for Collin's Kindergarten teacher, a truly outstanding first year teacher, I worked together with my friend Tina to make her a little something special.
We certainly weren't the first to alter a lunch box, but were so happy with how this turned out. Inspired by Ms. Evans favorite color, pink, we went to work.
Inside we filled it with everyday classroom materials that we decorated with cute papers to match her tin. Here's a list of what's inside:
Elmer's Glue "You're the glue that holds our class together"
White Chalk "Chalk one up to a great teacher"
Mini Post it Notes "Thanks for such a noteworthy year"
Eversharp Pencils "Thanks for sharpening our minds"
Stapler and Staples "Reading, Writing Arithmetic, thanks for teaching us the staples"
Scissor (pink of course) "You're a cut above the rest"
Highlighters "You're the highlight of our year"
Thumbtacks "Thanks to you I'm sharp as a tack"
Little bag filled with Cerrettas French Mints "You're worth a mint to me"

By triple matting everything, we made each and every little tag stand out, and of course cute ribbon never hurts! Many altered tins are decorated by decoupaging the paper to the tin, to try to keep things clean we decided to simply adhere the paper down with a good quality tape runner adhesive...it still holding a year later! This gift was just from Tina, myself and our kids, but to show her how much the entire class appreciated her I coordinated another little gift.
The "Apples" were from our local teacher store and I send one home with each student with a request to have them write something they loved about Ms. Evans, school, or what they learned. Each student then returned them to me and we put this little corkboard together for her, I love that she still has it as is in her classroom. Inside is a 12 x 12 scrapbook page she can just take off and put in her album. I have to say I love how sweet this is, it was her first year as a teacher, and our kids first year as students...definitely something special.