Teacher Gifts 2010

So, my boys to come into contact with a good half-dozen teachers every day. It's an AWESOME magnet school here in Tulsa that anyone living in the district has GOT to at least come tour and consider for their kids. It was originally a lab school and a "demonstration" school where all the teachers from the entire district came for a few days to learn alternative ways to teach kids based on kids' brain research and the like. Now it's just a "normal" walls-free multi-age hands-on school that still operates the same way but that doesn't have teachers coming to learn.

Anyhoo, all that's to say... The boys each have a "homebase" teacher and a "family" teacher. (Homebase is based on their grade or age group; family is a multi-age "class" that meets several afternoons a week, where they get to learn to interact with other ages, to learn from each other, to help the younger ones learn, etc.) So the "main" 2 teachers for each boy got a reusable shopping bag using this pattern.

(To be honest, I was underwhelmed with the pattern and project--sorry to the designer--but they're done and that's that. I wish I'd reinforced them with a little interfacing, but I guess they are shopping bags, after all. So, there they are. Ain't redoing them now! Overall, they're cute; just a pain in the you-know-what to make. Not overly quick to whip up.)


THEN, of course, the boys came home from school one afternoon; not to drool and gush over my long hard work, but to insist that Mrs. So and So, Mr. You Know Who, etc., all needed one, too. After all, they all teach the boys each day. Oy. So I set out to create a more time efficient project for the rest of them, and voila! After a zillion searches online and a hybrid of a billion tutorials, patterns, and photos, here's what I came up with:





A tutorial will follow this week, now that the teachers all have their gifts and the final rush of the school year's end is over. You know, while the boys are running through the house and I have all that, er, quiet time...