Friday, March 22, 2013

Cute idea for a teacher's birthday

My son's kindergarten teacher has a birthday this weekend, so a few of us moms decided to do something special for her.  Using stolen borrowed ideas from other moms and Pinterest, we came up with a plan of action.
One of the moms had a great idea that she had seen someone else do.  At morning drop-off, we waited for all of the kids, and gave each child a flower.  As each kiddo arrived at the classroom he/she presented the teacher with the flower and a "Happy Birthday!".  Such a cute idea!  She is left with a full bouquet.
When informed of this brilliant plan, I instantly went to Pinterest to find ideas for a cute vase to make.  I loved the pencil vases, so I decided to make one.  It would be mean not to share, so here you go, instructions on making a pencil vase.

First, gather the materials.  I decided to use colored pencils.  I was trying to find a plastic vase to glue them on to, but the vessel needs to be straight up and down for the pencils to line up correctly.  I didn't want to use a tin can, but your certainly could.  Glass was a concern because I thought that if a child had to carry the vase in it might break.  Alas, one of the moms made a deal with another teacher to deliver the vase, so I went ahead with using a wide mouthed mason jar.
Look!  It says right on the box "preferred by teachers" haha
I bought two boxes of pencils to be on the safe side, and I am glad I did, since I needed more than one box.  To begin, I put a rubber band around the jar so that I could plan the color order and know how many pencils I would need:
Next, I removed all of the pencils and laid them out so that I could glue them on in the exact order that I had so painstakingly shoved in the rubber band.
Now it's time to bust out the glue gun.  It is very important that the first pencil is perfectly straight, so I took a ruler and made a line up and down where the first pencil should go.  It seems like it would be time consuming to glue all of these pencils to a mason jar, but it really only took about 15 minutes.
 
This is what it will look like when you are done gluing all of the pencils on.  The hot glue will hold, but not perfectly, so when I was done I put a rubber band around the whole thing for insurance and then covered it with a cute ribbon for the finished product.
So this morning, about four of us gathered at an ungodly hour so that we could deliver the vase to the teacher that was going to give it to our teacher (does that make sense?) .  One mom bought the flowers, tulips that were beautiful, and we waited at the gate to intercept all of the little ones who are in the class.  This was no easy task.  The gates are open from 7:30 until 7:42, and in the midst of all of the children going in we had to spot each child in the class and give them a flower.  It culminated with the last child, who was late, so the other mom with the flowers had to run along side him explaining and giving him the flower.  It was hilarious, she looked like one of those people giving cups of water to marathon runners.  We all had a good laugh at that one.  I wish we could have been inside the classroom to see if the teacher liked it, as the children were so excited to give her flowers and wish her happy birthday.  One of the moms commented that her daughter didn't want to get out of bed this morning until she told her "It's Ms. O's birthday today!"  Then she jumped out of bed, ready to go! Ahh, kindergartners, they are so eager to please.
In addition to the flowers, we all chipped in and got her a gift card to go along with a hand made card.  One of the moms cut out circles from cardstock and had each child sign his/her name, and then she made a balloon bouquet on a card out of all of the circles-it was so cute!

I hope she liked it, I think the flower idea is just the cutest thing ever.











 

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for this idea! I just did this for my daughter's preschool class and the teacher loved it.

    ReplyDelete