Photo Gift Card Holder (and thank you booklet for teachers)

Today is the last day of school for my kids!  We were blessed with some really great teachers this year and I wanted to show our appreciation with an end-of-the-year gift.   As a former school teacher myself, I know that gift cards and hand written notes of thanks are usually appreciated much more than yet another coffee mug or scented body lotion.  For our gift this year, I combined the gift card/thank you note with the photo idea that we used on our Photo Bookmarks and our Lollipop Valentine's Cards.  I really like the way they turned out and I think the teachers will really like receiving them.

Check it out...

For the "specials" teachers ~ Music, Gym, Library, etc ~ I put all three kids' photos on the front and they each wrote their note of appreciation inside the little booklet.

Doesn't it almost look like they're holding up the gift card "sign"?

Then for their regular subjects, we made a separate booklet for each teacher they had and I put their individual pictures on the front holding up a gift card.  

They were really quite simple to do.  The hardest part was getting the kids to write the messages for the inside pages of the booklets.  They all switch classes for their different subjects, so they had quite a few sentences to write.

Here's what we did...

1.  I started by taking a picture of each kid holding their arms up over their head.

2.  Next, I printed out the pictures as a 4"x6" photo and cut the kids' bodies out.  I also went to Target and got a bunch of gift cards.  ( I was lucky enough to find a few Thank You and Teacher-themed ones, but the pickings were a bit slim ~ I guess it's a gift card time of year!)

3. For the booklets, I simply folded two pieces of colored cardstock in half and stapled them together to make a book.  On the front cover, I glued on the kid's picture and had them make a little thank you sign.  (I wanted something to be left on the card after the teacher removed and spent the gift card).

My girls had me add some patterned paper for a pretty touch.

4. Next, I used a couple glue dots to add the gift card on top of the sign.

5.  On the inside,  the kids wrote their messages to each of the teachers ( I gave them writing prompts and they had to choose four of them) and I wrote a thank you message of my own.

One from my 3rd grader

 

My son in 2nd grade

Even my kindergartner did some

I wanted to make it as easy as possible for the kids (since they are not into "homework" at all now that the weather is nice) so I just printed out a bunch of writing prompts and cut them to size.  All they had to do was choose any four for each teacher and complete the sentence. Then I just had to glue their responses and my own thank you note onto the pages in the booklet.

Some of the prompts we used:

My favorite part of _________ class was...
You really made me feel special when...
I really liked learning about...
I think you are a great teacher because...
I really appreciate that you...
You always made me smile when...
One thing I will always remember about this school year with you is...
You did a great job teaching me about...


That's it!...

I'm really pleased with the way they turned out and I look forward to using this same concept for other people and other occasions.  The kids will be working on ones for their dad for Father's Day soon!

Sharing our fun idea for gift card giving at:
Tatertots and Jello 
I heart Nap Time 
Frugal Girls 
Sun Scholars