Gifts Only Teachers Will Love

We LOVE gifts! Giving gifts is the best (but getting them is not so bad either!)  We here at Planning in Paradise want to begin Teacher Appreciation Week with a little gift humor and then we will end the week with someone winning a gift!

Our teacher friends are by far the funniest people we know. And there are often times when we are sitting around telling stories, we are all crying and shaking our heads in disbelief. You know those stories...things only your teacher friends understand. These are the kinds of stories we can't even make up.
Here are a few of our most hilarious/overly thoughtful gift stories. We are absolutely sure these gifts were given with love and a sweet heart. We are also absolutely sure they made us crack up! We hope you enjoy our laughs and share some of yours.

Teacher Favorites
Ever mention your favorite food a time or two to you class?
Make sure you are ready for a cooler full!
That's just what came in... a styrofoam cooler filled with tater tots!
Great laugh but took that cooler full of tots right to the cafeteria to bake them!

Gift Mix Up
Bubble bath sets are always nice. This set was "Naughty or Nice" and each bottle was labeled with a blushing detail of how to use it. As your mind races... just check your email. A frantic parent emailed  explaining how the Bath & Body Works gift set had been confused with the one she bought for a bachelorette party. Pretty safe to say, we were both cracking up and completely embarrassed!

Dining In?
Over the years we all have been blessed with gift cards for restaurants
and coffee stores. This one may be a first...
A Chinese Take-Out Menu!

Treats
Snacks and treats always make great gifts. Our students can hardly take it. They are dancing and can't stand the excitement of handing you the gift. But do you know how hard it must be for them? To deliver a bag of skittles with only 4 left... or a half eaten granola bar... or even a cupcake with no frosting left on it (but you can totally tell that bad boy had frosting on it 5 minutes ago!)

No Returns
Watch out! *Pun coming...
Receiving a nice piece of jewelry is always touching. Opening a VERY nice watch then to read the hand written note that is included in the box. "Happy Birthday! I hope you like this watch. Don't show my mom but I wanted you to have it!"
Whoops... Where is your backpack?

There isn't a day that goes by without something completely hilarious happening in our classrooms. We have the best job in the world. We hope you share some of the funnies you have with us. Thank you for all the wonderful gifts over the years and even more thanks for all the laughs.

We are giving away Planning In Paradise "Sand Dollars" which is just what we affectionately call a $25 Dollar Gift Card to Teachers Pay Teachers. Enter below on the Rafflecopter, by following ONE or ALL of our TpT stores. The more you follow the more chances you have to win. Good Luck Teachers!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Cafeteria is the HEART of the School

You have heard the saying that the kitchen is the heart of the home?  I believe this to be true.  No matter the style or size of your kitchen it is a place where memories are made and shared with loved ones.

Well that is true for our school cafeteria.  It’s a place where bodies and minds are nurioushed not only with breakfast and lunch but with all the other multipurpose actvities that the cafeteria has to offer.  From smelling the fresh baked bread, eating with your friends, to watching performaces from the stage.   I feel that the cafeteria is the heart of our school.

Next week we will be celebrating the school cafeteria staff.  Each grade level will adore them with banners, cards, pictures and special treats.  These small tokens of appreciation could never show how much we value our cafeteria staff.  

Our cafeteria staff consists of 7 ladies who work long hours and take care of us all.  On average they serve 400 free breakfast meals and then turn around and serve 720 hot lunches.  And they have also made a few special requests just for us!! These ladies are magical when they recite the names of our nearly 1200 students and they can even tell you who their teacher is!  They trully are sugar and spice and everthing nice and I’m so thankful to call them my friends. 

To show our appreciation to the cafeteria staff my class will be making a cookbook to help with some of the future meal planning.  It’s a tresure for sure and has something for everyone!  In our writing center we are also using some food list writing sheets.  These sheets are a perfect and fun way for your students to spell simple words phonetically, reviewing sound-letter relationships as well as a vocabulary review. They are all in the theme of food and cooking so they are a perfect fit. 

                                   Here is a copy of the Cooking List Writing Center!  Enjoy!

Did you

THANK
the 
lunch lady today?

I need a wAtEr BrEaK!!!

Each year at my school, our Firsties get to have a fun filled day of WATER!!

In honor of our summer vacation being HERE!!!! YAY!!!! I thought I would share some of our AWESOME Water Day Games.  In order to keep costs low for us, we asked all the parents to donate supplies for each of these games.  And boy did they followed through! We had more than enough of everything.

 #1. Water Squirters - We filled buckets with water, gave each child a water squirter, and they were off! (Of course we went over rules like no spraying in the face before hand AND NO water guns were allowed.)

  

#2. Bubbles - We gave each child a bottle of bubbles. just look at the excitement on her face!

#3. Car Wash - There are 2 buckets at either end of a line of kiddos.  One bucket is full of water and the other is empty. The first person in line squeezes a sponge and fills it with water from the first bucket. Then they pass the sponge down the line. The last person in line runs to the empty bucket and squeezes the sponge.  Then they run with the sponge back to the front of the line to refill it and start the sponge going down the line again. They get really wet with this one!

#4. Ice pops - We gave each child an ice pop as a fun snack. 

#5. Polar Plunge - We had 2 plastic pools filled with water and ice.  Brrrrr!!! The kiddos were in 2 lines and had to run down to the end of the pool, jump in the water, spin around on their bottoms, get back out, then run to their line and tag the next person. However, we live in FL and it was soooo hot that the ice kept melting and didn't stay very cold! One of our FABULOUS PTO moms decided that the kids should be squirted with ice cold water from a cooler in order to help us solve that problem!!

#6. Duck Duck Splash - We had 1 plastic pool filled with water, one small bucket of water, and 1 sponge. The kiddos sat around the pool and began a normal game of duck duck goose. The difference here is that the person walking around the circle is holding a sponge that is loaded with water. They hod the sponge over everyone's head as they say "duck". When they finally choose their "goose", they say "goose" and squeeze the sponge over that persons head.  Then they run around the pool. If the "chooser" catches the "goose", then the goose has to sit inside the pool until someone else gets caught!

These are just a few of our fun games. We also do a field day with more "DRY" activities but that I will save for another day!

Does your school allow you to have water games? How do you celebrate summer coming with your kiddos?

iT's FINALLY hErE!!

The loooooonnnnnggggggg awaited end of the year is finally here! Teachers be like "Whoop! Whoop! It's finally here" AND THEN it. hits. us. ALL. Our thoughts seem to change immediately to "Oh SugarHoneyIcedTea, it's here already????"! This happens to me every year.  We are chugging right along and all of a sudden its May. Now we have deadlines.  Progress Reports, Tutoring Data, Field Day letters to be sent home, Water Day letters to be sent home, Planning for "graduation", searching for cuter graduation songs than the other teachers have (You all know you do it!), Practicing for "graduation",  Testing for Report Cards, Report Cards, Profile Cards, Profile Card sorting, Cume folder checks, Summer homework prep, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Observations, PLUS all the normal stuff we do like weekly newsletters, homework packets, planning for each week, preparing for each week, the list goes on and on and on and on!! My head is spinning like the Gravitron (remember that old carnival ride? Is it still around?Huh?)
Anyways, I figured I could help out in one little area. I love writing lyrics to songs. In my class we sing to do pretty much EVERYTHING. And not boring Twinkle twinkle tunes but fun up beat pop tunes. (Parents -if your reading this-I promise they are top 10 pop hits that YOU sing with them in your car. Besides it's just the tune, I change the words) For instance, instead of saying to Line up in ABC order, we sing, "Line up like you do, l-l-l-line up like you do, A-a-aBC order we do, A-a-a BC order we do, line up like we do, l-l-line up like we do" to the tune of Love me like you do by Ellie Goulding. It is so funny how easy it is to get them to do something super quickly just by singing a tune they know and LOVE! They are constantly coming in with new tunes that they want me to make up words for them to do something to.  This is a super easy, fun thing to do with them to change it up a bit at the end of the year when everyone is feeling bogged down with ALL the testing and JUNK that we have to do!
To make my End of the year Graduation songs upbeat, up to date, and fun, I did just this.  I have two simple, fun songs that you could try at your End Of The Year graduation/celebrations.  Maybe this will take some of the End Of The Year pressure off (cause you know that's what you feel like- a pressure cooker about to BLOW).

One is to the tune of "Roar" by Katie Perry. I call it SEE ME GROW and the other is to the tune of "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen. It is called FIRST GRADE BABY.  Just click the links to see more details about each of the songs.

I hope my little tip helps things stay fun in your classroom as we all start to fall into the craziness of the end of the year!  Deep Breaths and remember, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming"!!!! You are almost done!