Teacher Survival Kit

My son starts school July 19th. The town that we moved to works on a year-round school schedule. Growing up I was on a traditional schedule all 13 years of school, so this will be a new experience for all of us. Kam is really excited to start kindergarten next week. The class lists were put up last Friday and we have been school supply shopping since then.

So while surfing Pinterest the other day ( who am I kidding, I’m on it daily, especially the app!) and I came across some new pins for first day of school teach gifts. I don’t remember ever brining anything when I was a kid, so I posted on my personal Facebook page, asking if anyone did this. I got mixed reviews. A few of my friends do, some don’t and 2 teachers I know said that the class wish list was a better thing to purchase from. We had already done that, so I decided to incorporate a few of those items and some more personal ones, in a…

Teacher Survival Kit.

I was inspired by a few different blogs, especially here and here.

I got the cute graphics for the front from here.

The contents:

I think they are pretty self explanatory. I will say that the tiny containers with lids I found last year at the dollar store and had never used them till now. The push-pins, pencil top erasers, post-its and index cards were $1 each at Michael’s. The rest is from Target’s Dollar Spot and school supply section.

The inside:

And the outside:

Tutorial:

I used a Basic Grey Lunch Pail Album Kit as my box. This is now discontinued, however any hinged metal box will work. I took a 12x12 piece of red card stock, measured the height and cut. You need 2 strips, since the 12x12 will not go all the way around. There will be overlap, but it doesn’t matter since the crayons will be hiding it. I used a glue stick ( you can also use Mod Podge) to put the paper around the lunch pail. I also cut a notch where the clasp is.

Next we took 3 boxes of these:

A quarter each at my Target. ( going to be making a lot more crayon art through the year and this is the best time to buy this). I will say that this is not my favorite brand for actual coloring, but for the projects I have in mind, they work great.

I had my son mix them all up and hand me a color of his choice as I hot glued them around the box. We started in the back, lining them up, doing the left then right then left then right etc, to make sure they were centered. On the sides I decided to make them go both directions.

Next was the ribbon. These are the .50 spools from Michaels.

I chose the thickest I could at that price. I wasn’t sure if they would stand out enough, but now I think that had I gotten anything thicker, it would have been too much with all the crayons. I also wanted to stay away from it looking too much like a rainbow, so I mixed in a few pastels with the brights. This was simply cutting a piece about 4 inches long and tying a double square not around the posts of the handle, front and back, both sides. There are 3 different colors on each post.

Kam is very excited to give this to his new teacher next week.

Do you give gifts to your kid’s teachers on the first day of school??

Linked to parties seen here.