The end of the year can bring up a lot of emotions for both students and teachers. While we believe their should be absolutely no expectation for teachers to give students a parting gift to commemorate their time together, we understand some teachers want to.
After spending 10 months with your students it can be hard not to get emotional seeing them move on. Here are a few meaningful and inexpensive things we have done for our students over the years to say good bye.
Spider Plant Babies
By far one of the most popular parting gifts for our students was these baby spider plants. We have a large spider plant that we keep in our classroom that throughout the year grows a lot of babies.
With about a month of school left we cut off all of the babies and propagate them in water. Once the babies have a good root system started we planted them in soil in some mason jars. We found mason jars for cheap at our local hardware store, but you can also find them here.
To make these gifts extra special we used our Cricut to cut out a design to add to the jar.
Hand Written Letter or Card
As teachers, our students often look up to us. A positive note or card reflecting on the past year and your relationship can be a treasured item for students.
If you can include a picture of each student doing something they enjoyed this year. Don’t have any pictures? Check out these colorful inspirational note cards to write your message on.
This gift is simple, but can have a major long lasting impact.
Class Tie Die T-Shirts
Have your students participate in making their own gift and tie die t-shirts as a class. When we have done this with our previous classes students share that it is the highlight of their year and will often wear their tie dye shirts for years to come.
We usually order our t-shirts from a bulk blank clothing supplier such as t-shirt.ca because you can get shirts for approximately $3-4 per student. We then have students write their initials on the tag, elastic band their shirts, and dunk them in buckets of rit dye to color. Be sure to read and follow dye instructions for best results.
Saying goodbye to students you’ve spent a whole year with is hard. Hopefully some of these ideas will help give you and your students some closure. Have a great summer!
