Rainbow of Appreciation: DIY

I can't wait for Teacher Appreciation Week! My son's school sends home a list of themed ideas for each day of teacher appreciation week. It emphasizes that kids can make their own gifts and show appreciation in many ways, instead of just buying gifts. I love that it emphasizes that they can draw, find, or create a gift. In this way, money is taken out of the equation and ALL children are able to participate.

As you've probably seen, I love to create. My kids really get into the spirit of creating out of junk. My husband just rolls his eyes when my son or daughter tells him not to recycle a cool looking glass or bottle. I've once heard them telling my husband, "But Daddy, we are going to make it into a Sneetch Star Machine." True story...

So, this was the perfect time to get my kids involved in a fun project! We hit Pinterest for some fun and easy ideas. We were immediately drawn to a colorful container from Place of My Taste. You need to head over to this amazing blog for her post on Getting Creative With Crayola. Loved it! We decided to create pencil containers, but we wanted to customize container to each specific teacher.

We started out with a bunch of aluminum cans. Ours were from cans of black beans. The small containers were from a 15.5 oz container. The large container was from a 28 oz can. The tall owl container is a glass container from some type of sauce.  Any container will work! You will just customize based on the size of your container.

First, choose your container and cover it with scrapbooking paper. Hot glue the paper directly to the can. Hot glue the crayons to the top of the can. The crayons should be about 1/2 inch taller than the top of the can.

 We decided to choose objects to glue to the bottom of the can. I got a bunch of erasers to glue in a diagonal pattern across the bottom. This gives more depth to the pencil container.

The finishing touch is to tie a ribbon around the middle of the crayons. I hot glued the ribbon directly to the crayons. Use any color ribbon that you like!

Our completed can!

 One of my son's teachers loves owls, so I went to the craft store to get some fun owls. I found these owls in the bargain bins! The large owl is a wooden owl and the smaller ones are scrapbooking accents, but you can really use anything.

 I hot glued the small owl accents to a small clothespin. Adding the clothespin to the accent will prop the accents out a little bit and make the jar look more balanced.

We also created a butterfly themed container. The butterflies are scrapbooking materials.

Glue the scrapbooking accents to the small clothespins.

The last project that we made is a decorative box. My son's homeroom teacher already has a pencil container on her desk, so he wanted to make her something special. I found him a wooden box in my craft supplies and let him paint it. He took the initiative to find out her favorite colors :)

 

After painting the entire box, he chose a stencil to paint on the top. He picked out dandelions flying in the air. This was his choice, because he said his teacher was his wish come true. He wanted a teacher that made him love to learn and she does!!

We taped the stencil to the top of the box and he used a paintbrush to fill in the stencil. Then, we used the Cricut machine to cut the letters out with vinyl adhesive. We peeled them off and attached them to the box. Easy!

All of our projects were completed in one afternoon and I made all of them with my kids! Hope you enjoyed these easy DIY presents and have a wonderful week!

 

I feel so blessed that my kids spend their days learning with such special teachers! Thank you to ALL of the amazing teachers out there. You are so appreciated!!

Here are the Amazon affiliate links that I used: