One of the greatest things in life is giving surprise gifts. And even better, is when you can make them yourself. I have said so many times, I don’t do enough for our beloved teachers. They give so much, love so much, and care so much for our/my kids – that I always want to do more for them.
They even are forgiving when they see me in the school drop off lane, in my yoga pants, no makeup & morning hair. THAT alone is worth many gifts! They welcome my kids with open arms & I know when I drop them off they are in the best hands. So I had an idea to make some pumpkins for the kids classrooms & teachers using sight words, popcorn words & some math.
I spray painted the pumpkins in a black matte with 2 coats to give the pumpkins a faux “chalkboard effect.” In the photo above is what the pumpkins look like with one coat. I even spray painted the pumpkin’s stem with the second coat. But whatever you want to do is fine. The longest part of this – is waiting for the paint to dry. But you can spray paint these pumpkins in a matter of minutes.
Once the pumpkins are dry, get the kids & together start spelling out the words you want to use. I purchased the plain white stickers at Michael’s. It’s a fun process if you get them involved. At times, I did find that the paint might peel off if you have to take the sticker off to straighten it out. SO BE CAREFUL & TRY TO APPLY AS STRAIGHT AS POSSIBLE. Which is hard to do if you let the kids do it. So I decided to let it all be. Which made them look better in my humble opinion. Because it can be a fun learning process as well & I wanted the pumpkins to be from the kids as well. My kids were so excited & they were truly beaming when we brought them into the classroom this morning.
Most importantly I think the teachers loved them & I hope it made them feel appreciated!!! We picked words that the twins (in Kindergarten) are working on as well as what my oldest (in 1st grade) is working on. So you can definitely customize these to whatever you child’s classroom focus is for the week or for the month.