Thank you gift for teachers

What is a good gift for my child’s teachers? 

When my daughter left nursery we wanted to give three types of gift: something handmade for her key workers; something all members of staff could share; and a present for the nursery itself, I.e. a toy or book that the younger children and future children could enjoy. Here’s what we came up with, starting with the latter:

A gift for the nursery setting: Wooden rainbow toy 

My daughter had one of these from a young age and loved it. I wasn’t sure if they had one at nursery or not but thought it was the kind of thing they could always use a second of! Wooden rainbows can be quite expensive (such as Grimms) but this wooden rainbow was around £13 from Amazon. 

A gift for the nursery staff to share:

I considered a few different options including a hamper of sweets and biscuits but we had given something similar the Christmas before, and as we had just been through a heatwave I didn’t want to give chocolate in case it melted. In the end we decided to order a box of bottles of wine so each of the permanent staff could choose a bottle to take home – I thought they might appreciate that! Though if you are going to do this it’s worth checking if all the staff drink alcohol or adding in some non-alcoholic options too.

A gift for our nursery key workers:

I wanted to give a handmade gift but also something that there would be at least a chance they would want to keep!

I did some browsing online and chose a plant pot, based on the sentiment ‘thank you for helping me grow’. Baker Ross tends to be my go-to for craft kits and they had a few paint-your-own ceramic planters, but in the shapes of various animals and nothing that seemed immediately suitable. They did have some tall wooden planters which I thought would be perfect – but I did have a few issues with them!

They came in a pack of three which is ideal; Sophie had a single key worker at the end of nursery but not long before she had had two who looked after her class jointly, and we also wanted to give a gift to the nursery manager.

Sophie had fun painting the wooden panels – you assemble the pots yourself afterwards – and decorating them with glitter and I gave them a coating of modge podge afterwards. 

Assembling them wasn’t as easy as I had hoped; there are slots on each side and some of the pieces didn’t seem to fit together very well and even when I did get them to fit, either they didn’t stay very well or there were gaps. I ended up using a glue gun to reinforce the joins!

Then came the problem of what to put in the pots. I wanted each pot to contain a flower but the earth would spill out of the gaps in the sides of the pot and when the plant was watered the wood would eventually break down and ruin. I found some tiny little plastic plant pots and mini saucers (sold separately) on Amazon and finally bought some bedding plants from the garden centre as they were the only plants I could find that were small enough to fit into these pots!

The finishing touch was a personalised plant marker from Lulu and Gray’s Etsy shop, that can be used again, with the name of the recipient and the message ‘thank you for helping me grow, love Sophie’.

The overall effect of the gift is very sweet I think even if putting the pots together was more of a challenge than I was expecting!