Teacher Appreciation Week Ideas

This week is National Teacher Appreciation Week! Being a former teacher myself, I like to let my kids' teachers know how much I appreciate all of the hard work I know they do throughout the whole year. While I love to do this, I'm also on a bit of a budget. I've got three kids, so that means three teachers....and that starts to add up fast! The things I do for all the teachers are pretty cheap.
I am also a room parent in Riley's room, so I have a little more money for the gifts that are from the whole class. This money comes from our PTO, but I usually supplement a little. ;0)
Here are some of the things my kids' teachers are getting this week:

Today, the kids brought chocolate chip cookies to each of their teachers with this cute note saying, "Thank you for making me one smart cookie!"

I usually send at least two things from the entire class when I'm the room parent, so the first one for Riley's teacher is a basket full of some of her favorite things!
Sweet tea, Orbit bubblegum, Almond Joys, Burt's Bees lip balm, and she likes the color green, so I threw some green nail polish in there.
I also included some school supplies, because what teacher doesn't like new school supplies? 
Mini highlighters, stickers, colorful paperclips, sticky notes, a notepad, magnetic dry erasers, and a cute notebook.

I added this cute little note to the basket:

 

On Wednesday this week, all three teachers are getting this note along with their favorite drink:

 

Riley's teacher's second gift from the class is this popcorn bowl. I saw the idea on Pinterest. I had each of the students paint their thumbprint on the bowl, then made them look like popcorn kernels with a sharpie & added their names and the words, "Mrs. Matechik's thirds grade. Thanks for helping us "POP" with knowledge!"

Then I filled it with microwave popcorn, "theatre" candy (dollar boxes at Wal-Mart), and a gift card to our local movie theatre.

For the last day of Teacher Appreciation Week, I always have the kids bring fresh flowers that have a note saying, "Thanks for helping me bloom this year!" I haven't gotten the flowers yet though. :0)

This next project isn't for any teachers, but it could be! I'm the room parent that gets to be in charge of the Muffins for Moms that our school does at the end of the year. (There's also a Donuts for Dads!) I'm in charge of getting the muffins, setting up, and making decorations. Since I love to get decorations from Dollar Tree, I headed there first, where I found these cute flower balloons! I got pink cups, "grass", yellow ribbon, and Styrofoam. I found the stickers at Wal-Mart.

I hot glued the ribbon around the cups, then glued one of the stickers on the seam of the ribbon to hide it. I glued the stickers because they were not staying put on their own.

I stuck a small piece of Styrofoam in the bottom of each cup and covered it with grass after poking a hole into it for with the balloon stem.

Then I put some hot glue on the end of the stem and stuck it in the styrafoam and held it a bit to keep it in place.
Aren't these cute?

These would be cute for teachers too! (Or for mom's out there!)

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week to all of you teachers out there!