Top 5 teacher holiday gifts 2024 Budget gifts under $25

Hey, it's Natalie and welcome back to Primary Focus. I'm so glad you're here today. It's time for my annual holiday teacher gift guide. Listen, there's two things in this life that I'm really good at.

Teaching and gift giving. When I give a gift, I always try to find something that is either useful or personal. So everything on this list today will hit one of those categories. Plus, I picked out gifts that are all 25 bucks and under. So, grab a cup of cheer and let's dive into the best holiday gifts for teachers.

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Let's start with number five. This gift is both useful and personal, and this is the snack pack. The snack pack is as simple as it sounds. It is a little goodie bag of snacks and treats for your favorite teacher. Now, if the PTA has sent out a gift giving guide or an all about me page from the teachers, this will be a great thing to reference.

Very often teachers are asked to list their favorite snacks and drinks on these.

So let me walk you through what a snack pack would be. Let's pretend you found out that your child's teacher really likes hot cocoa. What you would do is you would put together a little basket for them themed around hot cocoa. So maybe you find a cute canister of hot cocoa, and then maybe you're adding in a little bit of marshmallows, a peppermint stick. One year I received a lemonade kit because they knew that I loved the Panera lemonade.

There was a Panera near my school. They got me a nice yellow tumbler, a small gift card to Panera, some lemonade mix, And then a couple of other cute yellow things that went in with the kit. The great thing about a snack pack is you can make this as inexpensive or as expensive as you want.

You could do this in addition to a gift card. You could definitely go to a Dollar Tree or a Walmart and do this entire thing for 5 or less. Or, you could spend a little bit more and maybe go to a local bakery, a locally owned business, and highlight something in your town.

A lot of times the local businesses and bakeries are something that are a little bit different, so don't be afraid to go and get the special artisan cookie or whatever it might be. To treat your child's teacher.

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Number four, a gift from the heart. We're talking about a student gift and I'm going to tell you about a DIY ornament that you could make. Now, the gift from the heart is often free and the ornament that I'll show you is low cost this is the kind of gift that teachers love the most.

Teachers really do appreciate homemade cards, gifts, and other gifts from the heart. In fact, I still have a box with a ton of cards from my students. Let's get some out.

See, these are just a couple that are inside. This is one that was an actual card, but then there's a really nice long note from a parent in there. And then this was a very sweet homemade one, from a former student, which I kept. It was so sweet, especially because I was teaching kindergarten. Look how much this little baby wrote about me.

That is a full page, which for a five year old is incredibly impressive.

I'm going to share a quick clip of a card that I made in a previous gift giving video. If you want the full directions on it, click in to see it.

And now I want to show you a great DIY ornament that you could make. This is inspired by someone who worked in my classroom a long time ago named Miss Jessica. She made these cute. personalized ornaments for everybody in the class. But in this case, I'm going to talk about just making one for your teacher.

Clear ornaments like this are really easy to get this time of year. And if you look at it, you can actually pop it open and put things inside of the ornament. what I would recommend is if you have a picture of the class, use that. Now to protect the privacy of my students, I did not use a picture of the class.

I found this online. picture of me when I was teaching my yearbook picture from long ago and use that. if you have a picture of the teacher you could do that, but I think a class picture is probably more of what I'm going for, or maybe the teacher with a small group of students.

This is very easy and very inexpensive. I got a whole pack of these ornaments for about 7 and then I used heart shaped confetti to put inside.

I think glitter could be really cute to make it look like a snow globe. then I snapped it together and now I've got a great ornament.

When you do go to write the card that you give the ornament in, it's important to write a nice message. We love a message that's handwritten by the student. Mention something either memorable from the year that's happened so far, Or mention how they've impacted your child, or if you're the student, how they've impacted you.

This is really special because teachers don't always get positive feedback like this. And so to have it written down in something that we can keep forever, that we made an impact on you, that there was a special memory from class, it just means a lot to us. don't be afraid to put a little bit of extra effort into the art that you're making.

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Moving into number three, this one is useful, and this is, Gift cards. I say this in every single video because gift cards are one of the best options, if not the best options, for a teacher gift. you can go for something useful like a Target, Walmart, Amazon gift card, even the grocery store is a great gift card for teachers, or you could go something more personal, like this is a gift card to Barcelona Wine Bar and Restaurant, you could do like Nordstrom, Macy's, JCPenney, something where you know they're more likely to go and buy, clothes or appliances or home decor for themselves instead of classroom supplies. And hey, if you know that they're traveling or you've got a specific fast food restaurant near your school that you think they'll eat at, you could go and get one of those.

McDonald's Subway, Panera, Dunkin Donuts, any of those restaurants, that you know that they're going to stop into are both useful and personal for the teacher. Listen, I know some people think gift cards are impersonal, and I understand that, but

in most cases, you don't know your child's teacher that well. It's not like they are a friend or a family member that you are hanging out with on a casual basis all the time, it's a lot easier to buy a gift that your child's teacher won't like than it is to buy them something that they will like. So why not broaden it up a little bit and at least pin down the store that they can pick something out from, and then they can go from there. I used to hoard all of my gift cards, I would use them in August because that would be like funding my classroom for the next year.

So it's kind of a nice little investment.

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Now, as I go through these gifts, I think it goes without saying, there's no requirement that you get a gift for your teacher this time of year or at all during the school year.

If you do decide to send in a gift, my tip to you is to send the gift in a few days early. Listen, that last day of school before holiday break is a whirlwind. There's so much going on those days, the kids are excited, the teacher is trying to close down their classroom for a few weeks, and very often there is a party or some sort of festivity going on.

It's easy for things to get mixed up by accident. So if you're giving a gift with multiple parts or that isn't fully wrapped, it could get mixed up sending in the gift a few days early will help ensure that the teacher gets the gift intact and can really sit down and appreciate it before they're busy in that whirlwind of the holidays.

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Number two is something personalized. This is from a local business in my area a personalized dry erase board eraser. My friend just got married and changed her name. So I went ahead and ordered one for her.

I ordered this from a business called BobbieJeanKay, I got to pick out the color. I went with classic yellow, she had several different colors, blue, pink, purple, it even came with a little dry erase board marker and it came wrapped.

I think my friend is going to love this. I think she's going to use this. I've seen a lot of personalized gifts for teachers over the years and I've received a lot of personalized gifts. I've never seen one. seen this before. So this might be a good one to grab and get for your favorite teacher before they become super popular.

I kind of wish I was still in the classroom because I wish I had one of These I would have used this all the time. It would have been Miss Parmenter's special eraser Nobody would be able to touch it and I would know that I could keep it nice one thing that kind of drove me crazy was that the whiteboard erasers were always really gross in my classroom They were often like those foam kinds.

So there'd be like hunks missing out of them or kids would push their fingernails into them. And they were just kind of nasty. I did keep a personal eraser that the kids weren't allowed to touch. This would be a great signal to the kids of like, hello, this has my name on it. Please don't touch it.

This is my eraser. And then you can have the kids erasers, which are kind of gross for sharing.

I've got a link down below so you can shop her store She made this very very quickly if you're living in the Charlotte area, you can even pick up locally Otherwise shipping within the United States. She made this within a few days of me ordering it So you could absolutely order this and get this to the teacher pretty quickly

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And the number one gift, an act of kindness. Teachers need a lot of help. So how about instead of buying them a gift, reach out and find a way that you can help them. They might say no to you, or they might need to think on it a little bit. Not every teacher knows what kind of help they need, or is good at delegating, but there are a lot of teachers who have something that they have been putting off they don't feel like doing, that they would love for a volunteer to do.

For me personally, I knew at the holiday season, which is about the halfway mark in the year, I would like to get all new crayons and pencils for the kids, which would have been a lot of time individually labeling baggies, getting all the crayons in, swapping out the old crayons and the pencils and replacing them with new ones.

And so maybe you're the person that can come in for an hour or two or prepare them at home so that she can just give them to the kids I also like to change name tags out over the holiday break. I did new folders, a lot of those things I swapped over because we've been in school three, four months now and they're kind of thrashed.

But they're are also things I didn't really want to do. If I had had the help of somebody coming in and volunteering, I would have loved that support.

reach out, maybe suggest one of those things. things if they seem like they're not sure. if they say no, you might need to go down another avenue and just understand not everybody knows how to ask for help, but there are so many teachers that would love for you to come in and cut lamination or make a few copies for them.

Another thing to check out, if you don't seem to have a parent that is volunteering a lot, you could see if you could take on the holiday party or come in and do an easy activity. I do have a related video about a perfect holiday party and some tips for that, including some really funny horror stories from along the way.

So I highly recommend you check that out if you go down the route of planning a holiday festival. but that can take a lot off the teacher's plate and also help out financially because it's expensive to buy cupcakes for 24.

And so there you have it. Five personal and useful gifts for teachers that you know that they'll love. If you saw something you loved in this video today, I've got it linked down below. I would love it if you shopped with my affiliate links to support this channel.

And while you're down there, leave a comment. Let me know about a great gift that you were buying for the teacher. Or if you are a teacher, one that you've received in the past that you think other parents should know about. I've got a couple other videos that I picked out for you that I think that you would like.

More gift guides and things like that.

Thanks for watching Primary Focus. My name's Natalie. I'll see you next time