Parent gifts for the holidays! -

Every year I make it my personal goal to help the children create gifts that their parents will appreciate. I have a couple of requirements when I am looking for ideas; They must be attractive, hold up well so that they can be appreciated for years, be useful yet unique, and they should be related to what we have been working on as a class. For example, 2 years ago the children were engaged in a rock project, so we wanted to do something with rocks – we found small, decorative landscaping rocks, glued them to pendants and strung them on ribbons for a pretty necklace that mom would actually wear. Last the children were exploring coffee so we made felt coffee sleeves and spoons dipped in chocolate. This year looked to be a little bit more difficult, the children have been working with constuction materials and tools, and I found the best idea on Pinterest (we LOVE Pinterest!):

They are candle-holders made of washers (instructions here). I did make a few adjustments to make this project more realistic for the preschoolers. Here are our final products:

They turned out great and the kiddos can’t wait to give them to their parents! The next step is wrapping them, which brings me to great idea of the day #2: We picked up a bunch of flat rate boxes from the post office to wrap them in. The boxes are free – you don’t pay for them unless you ship something in them!

Please share your holiday gift ideas, We would love to hear about them!