Great End of the Year Teacher Gift Idea

This content has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc.  and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #ShareItForward #CollectiveBias

The end of the school year is quickly approaching. I know I probably say this every year, but I think this year flew by faster than any other year. Although, it could be because my son is in 5th grade and that means come fall, he’ll be in Junior High. I know…it totally sounds cliche, but I can remember the first day of kindergarten like it was yesterday! With the end of the school year comes end of the year teacher gift ideas. Sometimes we do a group class gifts and sometimes we do something on our own.

Last week, Bella and I attended the Sam’s Club Coca-Cola #ShareItForward demo event. Almost immediately upon walking to the back of the store, I saw the demo stand, but it was empty. It was supposed to be empty! A super nice employee was walking around with a rolling cooler FILLED with cans of Diet Coke and regular Coke asking customers if she could share a Coke with them!

My can said to “Share a Diet Coke with Dad”. That made me smile. There were many times I would be at my parents house and open a can of Diet Coke, drink half of it and give the rest to my dad to finish. He never seemed to mind that he was getting slightly flat Diet Coke!

Sam’s Club is a great place to get your favorite Coca-Cola products, especially for those summer parties and backyard BBQ’s! In my store, you can find the soft drinks in aisle 10. What’s nice is that they come in packs of 32 cans for $9.79 + deposit. You can’t beat that price! We have large family parties, so we go through LOTS of drinks!

While the 32 pack of cans of Diet Coke and regular Coke are great for parties (and we will be picking up several for my sons family birthday party in June), I couldn’t help but think about how great they would be to incorporate into an end of the year teacher gift. We are all familiar with the Coke products that have first names on it (still haven’t found my name…), but did you know that Coca-Cola also has products with nicknames on it?!? I didn’t until I picked my two 32 packs of Diet Coke at Sam’s Club!

I really like when classes collect money and one large class gift is put together. For this particular gift, I knew I wanted to utilize the Diet Coke cans. When I student taught, my lead teacher was forever drinking Diet Coke! Since teachers spend so much of their time and energy with our kids on a daily basis, I wanted to put together a basket that gave them time for THEM!

In the basket I put:

• Cans of Diet Coke
• Plastic cup with a straw…great for the pool or sitting on the deck (so bees don’t fly into the can)
• $25 Target gift card…retail therapy anyone?!?
• $25 Barnes and Noble…summer is the time for teachers to catch up on all the books they couldn’t read during the year!
• $25 Dave and Busters…great place to go with their own kids or as a date night with their spouse!
• $25 Macy’s gift card…can’t have too much retail therapy!
• $10 Taco Bell gift card
• Candy
• Crossword puzzle book

If you have each kid in the class donate $5, you will end up with plenty of money to put this type of basket together. More times than not, you will have kids donating more than $5. When I’ve organized something like this, I’ve had parents donating between $10 and $20 per child! The nice thing about a basket like this is that you can customize it to your teachers’ interests! Have a male teacher? Get them a gift card to their local major league baseball stadium. The possibilities are truly endless!

Some of the nicknames on the Diet Coke cans that I used are Favorite, VIP, Showstopper and Superstar. My personal favorite, but not really appropriate for this particular gift, are the cans that are pictured below!

I’ll be sharing those with my better half on Memorial day for our 13th wedding anniversary!

Please…check out the Share It Forward website and tell me what idea you have to #ShareItForward and/or which idea you like that they have shown!