National Teacher Appreciation Day - DIY Crayon Wreath

April 17, 2017

National Teacher Appreciation Day is Tuesday of the first full week in May, the entire week is celebrated as Teacher Appreciation Week. This year that is May 1st through May 5th.

I encourage you to plan with your children to do something special for their teachers. It takes a special person to be a teacher. In my opinion they have one of the toughest and underpaid jobs. I think it is important not only to honor and show appreciation for their investment in our children, but to also teach our children to appreciate and be grateful for the gift teachers are.

I understand with multiple children and other holidays or birthdays in May it can be expensive. It would be a good thing to plan and budget ahead of time to bless your children's teachers. Even if you have not planned properly for this year, your gift does not have to be elaborate, It can be as simple as a hand written thank you card or if you know what they like for example their favorite coffee shop or favorite restaurant you could bless them with a gift card. One year I made a basket with a "summer theme". The basket was orange for sunshine, and I tried to fill it with orange things (orange gum, orange sunscreen, orange candy, orange soda, and I used things from my coupon stock pile to add to it (lotion, nail polish, sticky notes, nice pens, and tea) and it turned out really cute. I printed out a Teacher Poem "Why God Made Teachers") and glued it to pretty card-stock. It was inexpensive, but thoughtful.

I know you will find posts on-line about how teachers do not want another mug or handmade gift, which I understand but at the same time, I know many teachers and they are grateful that you took the time and made the effort to appreciate them.

Last year I searched on Pinterest for Teacher Appreciation Gift Ideas and there were a ton of cute ideas. This one in particular stood out to me a "Crayon Wreath". There were a number of different styles and shapes. I headed out to my local craft store and gathered my supplies. These crayon wreaths turned out super cute and I want to share mine with you.

Crayon Wreath

Supplies Needed:
Liquid Fusion (found at Michael's)
Hot Glue Gun
Crayons (I used 3 boxes)--It did not fill the entire wreath, at the bottom I used pencils, crayon box, & decorations to fill.
Unfinished Wooden Wreath (Found mine at Michael's near the foam for flowers)
Ribbon (I used chalkboard ribbon from Michael's)
Decorations to add to it (pencils, wooden apple, mini chalkboard)

Directions:
First you want to glue the crayons to the wooden wreath using liquid fusion and your hot glue gun. I put the liquid fusion on first, to help make sure everything stayed, and then small amount of hot glue for each crayon, then place the crayon one at a time and hold for a few seconds. You don't want your glue gun too hot, or the crayon will melt. Once you get the hang of it, you can use enough hot glue to place 2-3 crayons at a time.

I arranged my colors near the same color, all the pinks, reds, together. You can do a mixture if you want. You need to fan out your crayons a little towards the tips. I did a practice run with no glue first to get the idea of how I would fan them out. It does not have to be perfect though, if you have a little spacing issue, you can use the decorations or even ribbon to help hide those.

Once the crayons are dry, you can add additional decorations, you could use a ruler, mini chalkboard and apple, you can find these at the craft store as well. You could even use the empty crayon box, I did. I used an owl on one teacher's because her class was called "Wise Owls".

Then glue the ribbon to the back of the wreath so it can hang, you could also make a bow, I am not the best bow maker so I did not make a bow on mine.