End of the Year Teacher Gift Ideas

May 2, 2025 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

We haven’t done end of the year gifts for my daughter’s teachers in a long time, but I remember it being important when she was in lower grades and had the same teacher for most of the day.

Most teachers will tell you the thing they want most is a personalized and heartfelt thank you, from the parents and/or the kids. If you know enough about what went on to share a story about what the teacher did for your child or how they felt about that teacher, so much the better.

Of course you can also throw in a gift card (teachers pretty much universally appreciate cards from Amazon, Target or Walmart). If you know the teacher’s favorite coffee place or fast food, a gift card for those places would be great too.

Make a gift card a little more special with a printable gift card holder like these from Kids Activities Blog.

Another great idea is to give them a gift of school supplies they can use in the classroom next year. I think every teacher would love some extra glue sticks, pencils or art supplies, and if you can present them in a cute way so much the better. Add the supplies to a basket or Mason jar, or use some of the ideas from Hands on as We Grow for inspiration.

That post also has a collection of cards that kids can make for their teacher, which is always a good addition to any of these gifts. My Little Moppet has another roundup of cards. I love this superhero one from Artsy Mama, which is meant to go with a candy bar but it doesn’t have to.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but I also loved to give gifts of papering like foot scrub. This recipe comes with a summer themed printable to thank teachers for a great year.

What do you like to do or get for end of the year gifts? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Artsy Mama]

Next Plan Idea:

Teacher Appreciation Ideas

Have you read?

Sun Activities for Kids

With summer coming soon in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s a fun time to incorporate activities and crafts with a sunny theme. Take some time to learn about the sun (this post from National Geographic Kids is a good one) and then do some sun activities.

Sun prints are a classic summer activity, and there are lots of ways to do them, from placing objects on construction paper (like in this craft from MomBrite) or by using sun print paper (aka cyanotype paper).

Practice threading, counting, color sorting and other skills with this easy sun threading activity from Taming Little Monsters.

Lessons 4 Little Ones has a great blog post full of ideas for science experiments using the sun, such as melting crayons, looking at shadows, making a sun dial and trying a solar oven. Printables to go with the lessons are available for purchase or you can just talk through the students’ hypotheses about what will happen and draw or otherwise record the results.

This updraft tower from Almost Unschoolers is a cool way to illustrate that the heat of the sun causes an updraft, which makes the pinwheel spin. This is a good one to do inside near a sunny window so you don’t have wind spinning the pinwheel instead.

You’ll want to get out in the sun to try this experiment form Life with Moore Babies to see what kinds of things the sun can melt. Using different kinds of sweets you can see how the sun melts things by itself and how you can concentrate the power of the sun with a magnifying glass.

Playing with shadows is fun for kids of all ages, and you can track a shadow through the day with this experiment from Science Sparks. If you’re working with multiple kids they can each choose an object to shadow (ha!) and at the end of the day you can see how different their shadows looked.

And of course you’ll want to make a sun themed suncatcher craft, right? This one from Fox Farm Home uses all the pretty flowers you collect on your nature walk and puts them in a sun-shaped frame.

Next Plan Idea:

Have you read?

Leave a Reply