This week is teacher appreciation week in our district.

And thanks once again to Pinterest I saw some great and inexpensive ideas to make for the numerous, wonderful souls who help inspire and love on my children.

First for the 1 teacher Liam is mainstreamed to, the 4 assistants who work with Liam, the 1 teacher who helps Braeden when he is on task and doing great, and the 3 drivers who work on the buses driving my boys to and from school, I made these M & M gifts.


And second, for the four amazing teachers who teach my three (Liam sees a different teacher in the morning and afternoon), I made these cute summer countdown clipboards.

The clipboards were super cheap, about $3 each, to make, but such a great idea! I'm a little bit in love with them! Thinking I might make one for us at home next year!

If you'd like to make one yourself, here are the directions...

Materials:
Basic, pressed board clipboard
Acrylic paint in any color
Modge podge
Stickers or vinyl letters
Printed numbers (I actually printed just the outline of the rectangle and then cricut cut the numbers from scrapbook paper and glued them on since I had eight sets of 0-9 to make)

First paint the clipboard with acrylic (your basic $.59 cent craft bottle - I already had these from an old project.)  I used three coats on each, but could have maybe used a fourth on the yellow and green.  I had seen clipboards not long ago at Dol*lar Tree but of course they were out when I went to get them, so I ended up finding two packs for $3.88 at Wal*Mart.

Place stickers or vinyl letters on the bottom.  I got the bigger stickers at Wal*Mart and needed two sheets.  The small stickers were ones I already had.

Modge Podge over the top of everything to give some sealant and a little shine.  (I had this already from previous projects.)

I then printed the rectangles for the numbers from HERE, I downloaded this and then "erased" the numbers using photo*shop elements so that I could paste in my own numbers, but so the rectangles would have a little more of a "finished" look.  Since I made eight sets of 0-9 I didn't want to use all of that ink printing them all out, and was excited about the look colorful scrapbook letters would have.  If you want to print the numbers you can find the links to each set HERE.

Afrter printing, I cut out the rectangles and then glued down the numbers.  I then clipped the numbers 0-9 on each side and Voila' - done!  And I LOVE them!

The kids are thrilled to give these out tomorrow and I think the teachers will like them too! :)