First, we have a board committee called TLC, and each month she organizes volunteers to bring in whatever our theme is for lunch time... Examples are Tailgate party, Soups and salads, Mexican, Just desserts, just to name a few! We always do the first day of school and at the end of the year we have a budget for a catered in meal like Chick fil A! The teachers LOVE the free meal every month and we have found we have some incredible cooks! As president, I always get several letters of thanks from our staff!
Second, we also give each staff member $100 at the beginning of each school year for supplies for their classroom. New teachers and teachers who switch grades get $200. Special classes like library, art, etc get $150. They really appreciate not having to use their own money for little things!!!
Went ahead and rounded up your ideas (on this thread as well as on Facebook, www.facebook.com/ptotoday) and compiled them in one list, which we posted on our blog. A cheat sheet, if you will!
Our PTO is new this year at a very small school. We have already done luncheons, massage certificates, big candy bars with a cute saying, and the mini sparkling cider bottles. Also for the staff birthdays we gave a card with a box of Whoppers and a fake flower bouquet. They loved it.
We plan on doing for our actual appreciation week some gift cards, a breakfast, a luncheon, and we are having the kids draw pictures and write their favorite part of the year they had with their teacher. We will then put them in book form. We are also giving our left over prizes from our carnival to our teachers for their treasure boxes. We plan on leaving little gifts everyday in their teacher boxes.
Some ideas we found that we liked were the M&M in a jar with the poem that talks about what each color means about teaching. There is also the quilt idea. Each child draws a picture on a quilt square about their teacher. Sew it together and give to them. There is also the idea of decorating the teachers doors with creative ways to say thank you, or if they have a bulletin board outside their room, put up a blank sheet of paper and let the kids write nice notes all over it to their teacher.
We want to make sure all the staff gets appreciated and so for our cooks we bought white aprons and all the kids in the school sign their name on it with fabric markers.
I was teaching before my family moved and I loved getting the simple things like my favorite pop or candy bar or pack of gum. If you are good with origami then fold some dollar bills into flowers and give as a bouquet. All teachers have a stash of reading books in their rooms. Scholastic has great deals to order some books for the teachers classrooms. As far as supplies, the one supply item that our teachers can't get enough of is dry erase markers.
I am excited to see what others post and thanks to those who have already posted.
Last year, we did something small each day of the week for Teacher Appreciation. We also sent home a secret flier with students informing parents what the theme for each day was and encouraging them to have their children participate.
Day 1-Thank you card/picture (homemade) telling the teacher how much they are appreciated.
Day 2-Sweet Day (each student was encouraged to bring in a single piece of candy)
Day 3-Fruit Basket (each student was encouraged to bring in a piece of fresh fruit and the PTO provided the basket)
Day 4-Flower day (each student was encouraged to pick a flower from their garden and the PTO provided vases)
Day 5-School supply day (students were encouraged to bring in a school supply) **This was the favorite of teachers. A twist could be a different supply each day i.e., glue sticks, pencils, paper, wipes, etc.
Our PTO president attached little sayings to one thing for each day for each teacher.
Then the PTO provided a catered lunch on the actual Teacher Appreciation Day from Carraba's and we had a company come in to wash all of their cars secretly!
