Xmas Gift for reception teachers?

[MrsTaraPlumbing]

What do you recommend? I used to house share with teachers that had enough cheap mugs to open a ceramics shop!

When at nursery we gave a donation for the staff Xmas party (a drink).
Now I have twins - 2 classes that is 6 teachers (inc teaching assistants).
So I am thinking drink for their party might be a good idea - if they have one - I need to ask.

Just wonder if there are any other really good ideas?

Hi MrsTaraPlumbing:

We're at a CofE school and although nothing is said outright, giving a bottle of wine isn't the done thing here.

Our solution has been to make gifts.

Paperweights: Find round stones in the garden. Clean them up and paint them - teacher's name, numbers, like a lady-bird, flowers.

Plants: We plant up spring bulbs in a ceramic pot. I tend to buy up one's on sale. If the pot is painted white - I get indelible markers or you can get ceramic pens from something like Baker Ross and have the kids draw pictures of their teacher teaching them. If it's ceramic I get in paint samplers and have the girls paint them.

Wreaths: We had a neighbour trimming his holly bushes and asked if we could use them. I got a wreath frame (or you can get those Styrofoam circles) and we made them wreaths with some cheap small round ornaments (you know the type sold in a little tube) and ribbon we had spare.

One year we made dough ornaments for their teachers/ TAs: www.wikihow.com/Make-Christmas-Ornaments-with-Dough or theimaginationtree.com/2011/12/easy-salt-dough-ornaments.html - all you need is acryllic paint/ food colouring, flour, salt & water.

Bookmarks. If you have access to a laminater (we do through my work) - you can have your DC design a nice book mark on sturdy card and then laminate it. You can get nice tassels to make it look the business. We did this and included things like post-it notes, green pens and blue tack - which didn't seem that 'great' but actually the teachers/ TAs all said how useful it was and DDs said they used it all the time.

HTH

In the past I've done Christmassy tealight holders, wine, personalised notebooks, handwarmers.

Last year I bought a big tin of posh biscuits for the staffroom and sent them in a couple of weeks before the end of term for the staff to share. Might do that again - I now have 3 dcs at school and there are a lot of different adults in their classrooms!

Last year I gave the teachers and TAs homemade jam, which went down well. We decorated the pots really prettily and attached a label saying "Made with fruit picked by BigGapBoy".
Every one we gave to commented later how pleased they were with it.

I am planning to do the same this year.