Teacher Appreciation Themes for Your School

Teacher appreciation week is typically celebrated in the first full week of May, but any time is a good time to tell and show teachers how much we care. Whether you’re a parent looking for teacher appreciation ideas or an administrator wanting a fun way to reward your team, here are some great themes and ideas for teacher appreciation week.

At my daughter’s school we typically turn the conference room into a lounge and full stock it with snacks, as well as bringing in lunch at least during the week. These snack-themed printables from Tidy Lady Printables are great for a themed snack day, whether you’re serving popcorn, cookies, snowcones or s’mores.

The Aloha Hut has a cute idea for a candy bar for teacher appreciation, complete with printables you can use to make your own.

If your school decorates doors, check out this collection of door ideas for teacher appreciation from Events to Celebrate. It might give you an idea for a theme you could use for a gift or whole school theme as well. For example there are several garden themed ones, which could turn into giving teachers plants for their classrooms or other garden-themed goodies.

Play Party Plan has a good roundup of teacher appreciation ideas, including cookies, coffee, doughnuts, pie, Italian sodas and more. Such fun and easy ways to provide teachers with treats throughout the day.

PTO Today has a list of a ton of different teacher appreciation ideas that have been done in the real world (and not necessarily by party professionals, so they’re doable for the rest of us). Lots of snack carts, travel themes, sweet gifts and time out activities to make teachers feel a tiny bit of the appreciation and love we feel for them all year long.

Do you have great ideas for teacher appreciation themes? Or a gift you’ve given a teacher that they loved? We’d love to hear about it!

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Teach the Teacher Printable Worksheets: A Fun…

Human brains are pretty amazing, allowing us to think, feel, create, communicate, move and more. But humans aren’t the only animals with cool brains, as Crab Museum explains in the book The No-Brainer Brain Explainer (illustrated by Bruno Valasse).

This book, aimed at kids in grades 1-4, is colorful and silly but also educational about how brains actually work, with billions of neurons sending electrical and chemical signals around the body.

“Everything we think, feel and experience comes from an electrical relay race, with neurons passing chemical batons to each other,” the book says. “The constant chatter of billions of brain cells creates your entire world.”

The book compares the brains of mammals to those of crabs (the book is “written” by a crab after all) and notes that crabs have fewer neurons and of course are much smaller, but they have separate parts of their brains that control their eyes and their legs. Crabs are also capable of remembering things, using tools and solving puzzles.

Some animals’ brains allow them to know more about their world in different ways from humans, such as spiders being sensitive to vibrations in their webs and catfish having an amazing sense of taste, with taste sensors all over their bodies.

It notes that 95 percent of brain activity goes toward things we do unconsciously, like breathing, walking and catching a ball flying toward us. It also talks about dreams, memory, how our emotions try to predict the future, where brains came from and fun facts about brains. For example, did you know a sperm whale is believed to have the biggest brain of any creature that’s even lived? Their brains weigh 18 pounds, compared to just 2.5 pounds for humans.

Information on what creatures have the smallest brains, the toughest brains, the most brains and those who actually eat their own brains will delight kids (and maybe gross them out a little bit). They’ll also enjoy learning about the mycelium network of fungi, which is like a brain without a body, and slime molds, which are like a brain without a brain.

It ends talking about why human brains are so special because we’ve found ways to work together, communicate and build communities on a scale bigger than any other animal.

Kids and adults alike will enjoy this colorful, silly and informational book about brains!

About the book: 64 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail price $19.99.

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