25 simple crafts gifts ideas

5 Simple Holiday Gifts for your Students

Diary of a Not So Wimpy Teacher: 5 Simple Holiday Gifts for your Students Gifting is my love language and so I just LOVE giving holiday gifts to my sweet third graders. The only problem? It can get pricey pretty quick. I want to share a few simple gift ideas that won’t break the bank or require any Martha Stewart type crafting. 1. Books I absolutely adore giving my students a special book before saying goodbye for winter break. I enjoy writing sweet notes in the front of each book and I imagine them treasuring the book for life. Or at least until they get those fancy electronics from Santa! Don’t run off to Barnes and Noble to buy these books. I love that place, but it would cost way to much to buy 24 chapter books for my students. Buy from Scholastic! Find the $1 books or a set of books that work for your grade level. This year I am buying each of my students a copy of Winter According to Humphrey. I LOVE this book! This year, each of my kids will be getting the same book. (We just love Humphrey!) Most of the time though, I buy a variety of books and hold a book auction! Students are able to get the book that they are most interested in. They love it and it is a fun activity for the day before break! After the auction, I have them play math games while I walk around the room putting notes on the inside covers. You can read more about how I organize and run my book auctions HERE. 2. I Spy Holiday Ornaments I Spy is pretty addicting- no matter your age. I made these fun ornaments for my students and they could NOT stop looking for items that their friends did not have! I bought all of the supplies at Hobby Lobby (but I am sure you could find them at Michael’s or other craft stores) and they ended up costing about $1 per ornament. All you do is pour the fake snow into the clear bulbs. Add the tiny little holiday shapes. I found them with the scrapbooking supplies. You can get creative with this! You could use holiday shapes sequins, mini bells, small pom poms or a tiny button. Then hot glue the top onto the ornament. Add the tag and some ribbon. Viola! Would you like the tag I used? You can download it for FREE by clicking HERE. 3. Math Card Game I have no problem being that sneaky teacher who sends home educational holiday gifts! My students love to play math games in the classroom. So why not send home a simple math game that they can play with their family? I bought the cards at the dollar store. I got two decks for a dollar which made this an extremely inexpensive gift. I used some glue dots to attach the deck of cards to the direction card. I made a card for Addition War and a card for Multiplication War. You can grab the direction cards for FREE by clicking HERE. 5. Craft Kits My students love to get crafty so I was very excited to find some cute craft kits at Michael’s! The kits only cost $1 and if you had a coupon, you could get them even cheaper! They had these cute cross stitch kits that I just know my third graders would enjoy. And these bead kits that would also be a huge hit. 6. Play-doh Cards Kids love Play-doh. My own kids (ages 9-11) all love to make fun new creations with Play-doh. You can buy bags of the tiny size Play-doh containers in the party aisle at Wal-Mart. They will run you about $4 for 12. Now you just need to make them a bit cuter… I found this adorable Play-doh card on the blog Repeat Crafter Me. Click HERE to download her FREE template and see her step-by-step directions for assembly. I hope that this gave you some inspiration for your own class gifts! Happy gifting!