Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! This is our chance to celebrate and honor the educators and school staff who have dedicated themselves to helping our children learn and grow. To make it easier for parents and students to express their gratitude, I have a list of creative and thoughtful Teacher Appreciation celebration ideas that will surely make your favorite teachers feel valued and appreciated. Whether it’s a simple thank-you note or a grand gesture of appreciation, we’ve got you covered for the entire week. Get ready to show your teachers some love and make this National Teacher Appreciation Week one to remember!
Table of Contents
- How to Celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week
- What is Teacher Appreciation Week?
- When is Teacher Appreciation Week 2024?
- How do you celebrate Teacher Appreciation Day?
- Teacher Appreciation Week Idea Themes
- Teacher Appreciation Week Sample Schedule
- Here is What I did for Teacher Appreciation Week
- Ideas for the Teacher’s Lounge
- Ideas for Entire Staff
- Teacher Gifts Ideas
- Gifts Teachers Really Want!
- More Ideas for Teacher Appreciation Week
- How to Give a Virtual Thank You!
- Free Appreciation Coloring Pages
- Teacher Door Decoration Ideas
- Make Teacher Appreciation Week Easy With These Printables
How to Celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week
Teachers have such a great impact on the lives of our children. I consider it an honor to find special ways to show exceptional educators my gratitude during Teacher Appreciation Week, and I hope that I can help you find a special way to say “thank you” to the wonderful teachers in the life of your family too!
What is Teacher Appreciation Week?
Eleanor Roosevelt initiated National Teacher Appreciation Week in 1953 to recognize and honor the significant contributions of teachers to our society. This week-long celebration serves as a reminder of the vital role teachers play in shaping the future generation. Since 1984, the National PTA (Parent Teacher Association) has designated a full week during the public school year to honor the men and women who lend their passion, skills, hard work, and dedication to educating our children.
When is Teacher Appreciation Week 2024?
The first full week of May is designated as National Teacher Appreciation Week by the National PTA and the NEA (National Education Association. The official celebration of teachers has taken place during the first full week of May every year, withNational Teacher Dayon the Tuesday of the first full week. Teacher Appreciation Week 2024starts on Monday, May 6, and ends on Friday, May 10 making National Teacher’s Day May 7th.
How do you celebrate Teacher Appreciation Day?
If you need awesome teacher appreciation gifts be sure to check out these teacher gifts. You will find hundreds of ideas.Here are some simple ideas.
- Write a note of thanks and appreciation for your teacher.
- Round up a basket of goodies that your teacher can enjoy over the summer.
- Give gift cards to your teacher’s favorite restaurants, shopping places, or coffee shops.
- Decorate your teacher’s door with a creative banner or sign.
- Stock the teacher’s classroom with supplies that are running low.
- Bring in your teacher’s favorite treats and snacks.
- Provide lunch for the teacher.
- Find ways to include the staff, including secretaries and janitors.
- Create a classroom gift like a photo album to involve the entire class.
- Create a fun theme for the week that encourages the teacher to be appreciated all week long!
- Fill a gift basket full of school supplies and those things a teacher often has to use their own money for.
- Set up a wish list for your teacher on Amazon and let parents purchase just what your teacher wants and need.
Around the World
Give teachers a trip around the world. Feature a different country’s cuisine every day. Kick it up a notch with clever puns. Think Mexican Monday for nacho average teachers to ‘pasta’tively awesome teacher for Italy. Display “Thank you!” in different languages on the bulletin boards
Super Hero
Without a doubt, teaching is a superpower! Decorate the lounge with action bubbles with special messages from the students. A lunch with hero sandwiches one day and soup for souper teachers another is a fun way to carry on the theme. Super Hero Theme from Kara’s Party Ideas!
Out of This World
Head into outer space to let teachers know they are out of this world. Decorate with stars and planets. Serve rocket fuel drinks like coffee and sodas one day and give out pop rocks, moon pies, and Milky Way candy bars on other days. This is a sure way to let teachers know ….. We’re over the moon about you!
Beach/Luau
Sweep teachers away to paradise. Umbrella drinks and lei’s are the perfect decoration.
Hooray for Hollywood
Give teachers the star treatment by rolling out the red carpet. Decorate with movie-related props, serve popcorn and other traditional movie snacks in the teacher lounge. Be sure to hand out Academy Awards for awesome teaching. A great way to let teachers know they are picture-perfect. This movie and popcorn theme is super cute!
Garden Party
Encourage all students to bring flowers to their teacher, You plant the seeds of knowledge and Thanks for helping us grow are great sayings for bulletin boards and small gifts.
Spa Week
Take care of teachers with a week of luxury and relaxation. Hire a service to come to the lounge to do chair massages and offer spa-friendly foods like fresh fruits and veggies along with flavored waters. Even treat teachers to a packaged facemask with a tag that says we can’t mask our appreciation for your hard work.
Our Teachers Raise the Bar
The sky’s the limit with this one. It is easy to host a variety of bars…. a potato bar, nacho bar, salad bar, etc…… and of course give teachers a candy bar for the best teacher bar none.
Rising Up to Excellence
No question teachers lift us up. Use phrases like “Wake up” and have breakfast or hire a coffee service to come to make lattes. Giddy up, Dress up, Rise up, Surf’s up, Batter up are more ideas.
Grand Slam
Pennant banners are the perfect decoration for this. Give students blank pennant shapes to write special notes on to place in hallways and the lounge. Each day serve a different ballpark fave like hot dogs, popcorn, cotton candy, etc.
Spy
Play off phrases like “We spy the world’s best teachers” and “It’s no mystery, our teachers rock!” Decorate with magnifying glasses and fingerprints
We’re Wild About You
So many fun treats with this one… animal crackers, monkey bread, banana bread, bananas, etc. to let teachers know … We are wild about you! and Were bananas over you!
NACHO Average Teachers
The perfect theme to serve the teachers is a nacho bar. This is an easy idea to pull off. Let me share how I did it and the Gracias Banner file.
Teacher Appreciation Week Sample Schedule
Many schools do something each day. Planning it with daily ideas can make it easy. “If you give a teacher…” is such a fun play on the popular children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Teachers will also like these daily ideas:
- We ‘Donut’ know what we would do without you – coffee and donuts
- Thanks for making our kids such smart ‘cookies’ – fresh baked cookies
- We couldn’t have ‘picked’ better teachers – fresh fruit
- Thanks for ‘quenching’ the thirst for knowledge – refreshing drinks
- There’s muffin like a great teacher – muffins and juice
- You’re all that and a bag of chips – small individual bags of chips
Here is What I did for Teacher Appreciation Week
I am a huge fan of vinyl banners that can be used year after year. They are typically reasonable in cost or are something that can be donated from a local sign shop. Here is a sample of what we did during the week:
Teachers were served coffee and donuts in the teacher lounge. One year we hired a donut truck to come to the parking lot.
Small bouquets were purchased from a local flower wholesaler. We sat them in buckets in front of this banner to make sure they know we could not have hand-picked better teachers and staff.
A local bakery made the teacher cupcakes to show our teacher take the cake.
If you would like to make your own 2ft by 4ft banner you will find the graphics for the first two banners are included in my teacher appreciation bundle.
Ideas for the Teacher’s Lounge
These free printable appreciation signs are a fun way to show your teachers how much you appreciate their hard work! These freebies make teacher appreciation activities EASY!
Ideas for Entire Staff
Teachers aren’t the only ones making an impact. Secretaries, janitors, all of the non-homeroom classes, and support staff need to be recognized too! These ideas can be printed off and placed in the staff mailboxes.
The printable for the next three ideas can be found in my teacher printable bundle.
- Post-it Note Pads
- We are Lucky to Have You Lottery Ticket Gift
- Hands down Best Teachers Hand Sanitizer Gift
Teacher Gifts Ideas
Here are a few simple and inexpensive teacher appreciation ideas that are easy to execute! These free downloadables make darling handmade gifts.
Teacher gifts can be extravagant or simple, store-bought or handmade, or just a card of thanks with or without a gift card. Here are some great ideas that are sure to make each of your teachers feel loved and special! My children have great teachers and I love this opportunity to thank them. Here are some special gift tags that can be attached to anything! And as always, I still have more for you check out thes printable teacher gifts.
Gifts Teachers Really Want!
A survey of teachers showed they loved handwritten notes and gift cards. No matter what you decide to gift to your teacher, a hand-written thank you card from a student is always appreciated and treasured.
Printable gift card holders are designed perfectly for the gift cards that you can pick up right at the register of your grocery store on the way to school. Here are more teacher gift card ideas.
This free printable pencil card takes minutes to make and couldn’t be any cuter! The inside is blank to add your own personal note and even a gift card if you like.
Related: If you need help with just the right words check out these thank you teacher messages.
More Ideas for Teacher Appreciation Week
As you can see US Teacher Appreciation Week can be quite an affair. It doesn’t have to be hard to support teachers and thank them for being good role models for our children. Their days can be tireless and they certainly deserve a pat on the back for being a good teacher.
How to Give a Virtual Thank You!
If you are distance learning send your teacher a virtual thank you. Let kids say thank you by holding up this cute thank you coloring sign. Such a fun way to say thanks virtually! You can even post on social media.
Free Appreciation Coloring Pages
If your child loves to color these coloring pages make a heartfelt gift. Give the teacher questionnaire to your teacher early and you will know exactly what they would like most!
Teacher Door Decoration Ideas
Decorating and personalizing the classroom door is a tradition that is loved by both kids and teachers at most schools! You can find some great ideas to help you get started with these fun Teacher Appreciation Door Ideas. and here
There are so manyeasy door ideasincluding this Super Star door (click the links). I especially like the ideas that allow each student to write a personal note to the teacher. These ideas will help you create a door your teacher will truly treasure! These are Ideas from my kid’s school over the years. Be sure to click through all three links for loads of ideas!
Make Teacher Appreciation Week Easy With These Printables
Give Pinterest-worthy gifts that teachers love without all the work!
Over 200 done for you printables will help you Create usefulgifts that will be loved by teachers.
Everything at your fingertips!
LEARN MORE
All the printables you need are at your fingertips organized in an online database. Access anytime and print whatever you like whenever you want.
I hope these ideas help you to have a happy teacher appreciation week! Do you have any ideas that you have used at your children’s school? I would love to hear about them!
I would love to keep you fully stocked with creative ideas, yummy recipes, fun crafts, and loads of free printables. Subscribe to Skip to my Lou to get new ideas delivered to your inbox. Follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram for all my latest updates.
