10 Easy Handmade Gifts for Teacher, Because Nothing Says Thank You Like a Homemade Gift

10 Easy Handmade Gifts for Teacher, Because Nothing Says Thank You Like a Homemade Gift

Teachers rarely expect to be thanked but if there is one kind of gift that they do like, it has to be things handmade for them by their students. Nothing beats the charm of a homemade gift in the eyes of their teacher. Your favourite teacher may have a shelf full of 'best teacher' mugs that she or he doesn't know what to do with, but these easy to make gift ideas for teacher will be extremely unique and occupy a place of pride at her desk or home.

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What Gifts to Get or Make for a Teacher?

Thoughtfulness is the Most Preferred Gift

Teachers usually choose their professions because they naturally like caring for children, watching them learn and reach for the stars, and really not because it’s a high paying job or they get recognized often! No one really cares for the teacher’s day or efforts at the end of a school term. So choosing a gift that not only expresses a student and his parents’ gratitude and appreciation for their role in the child’s life needs to be thoughtfully executed.

Contributions are Always Welcome

Rather than going for expensive gifts or things that may be not be acceptable given the teacher’s work ethics and responsibility to the school, what would be a more appreciable initiative would be getting school supplies, or sponsoring a school activity or contributing towards a common cause for the students.

Personalised Gifts

It may take a little longer than the usual gifting process, but would mean the world to a teacher to receive thoughtful letters or notes from the student or parents, or a handcrafted gift. If the teacher has a sweet tooth, a little box of candies with a thoughtful message to brighten his/her day, a basket of fruits that don’t require refrigeration or a home-made meal would any day be more valuable and heartening for the teacher.

10 Best Handmade Gift Ideas for Teachers

Thanks for Helping Me Grow Pot

Teachers plant and nurture the seeds of knowledge that last for life in an Individual’s learning journey. The cycle of learning continues, whether it is in school, college or life! Hence it is only appropriate that you recognize your teacher or mentor’s efforts and guidance with a plant or flower pot. To create a nice assortment of small plants or flower pots, follow the directions below.

You will need:
  • 1 (4 x 4) pine or white wood board
  • Some brad nails
  • A glue for wood – for making a container to hold the plants, and
  • 3 mason jars
  • The wood, nails and glue can be purchased from your local hardware store.

How to make it:
  • Cut 3 12” pieces and 2.75 “pieces from the board.
  • Then glue and nail two 12” pieces to the sides of the third 12” piece and slide in the two end pieces with glue, nailing them in place.
  • Sand the board to a fine finish and place the mason jars inside the wooden container.
  • Now choose a three succulents or flowers you’d like to present from your local nursery, with some potting soil and white pebbles to add to the top, and you’ll have your little planters of appreciation ready!
  • You can attach plain white or black tags to each jar and handwrite a short message saying, “Thanks for helping me grow”.

Mini Art Easel

The mini art easel is a compact gift that can be displayed on your teacher’s desk. You can buy all this material from itsybitsy.in store either online or locally.

Mini Art Easel

What you need:
  • A mini display easel with a 6 x 8 cm canvas
  • Chalkboard paint
  • Colors of your choice
  • A paint brush and chalk

How to make it:
  • Coat the mini canvas with the chalkboard paint, and once it dries completely then add another coat.
  • Allow it to dry properly as per the given instructions on the paint bottle.
  • Next, paint the easel with a color of your choice, when it is dry, write a small note or a message for your teacher with a chalk or chalk marker and wrap it up with a little ribbon!
  • Some quirky and appreciative notes could be – “it takes a big heart to shape little minds. Tq!” or “you took my hand, opened my mind and touched my heart Teacher. Thank you!”

Sugar Scrub

Sugar scrubs are excellent for exfoliating and smoothening the skin, with their busy schedules both at home and at work, teachers are always nearly as busy as any other working professional. To express your gratitude and care for the teacher, it would be nice to present these DIY scrubs made from some easy home ingredients, easy on the pocket and wonderfully soothing! You’d make a set of two scrubs with different fragrance and things.

You can buy the essential oils and vitamin E from any cosmetic items store or online at nykaa.com.

What you need:

Lavender Vanilla Sugar Scrub
  • A cup of sugar
  • ½ cup liquid coconut oil
  • A tsp of vanilla extract
  • ½ tsp. vitamin E
  • 15 drops of lavender essential oil

Orange Peppermint Scrub
  • 1 cup sugar
  • ½ cup liquid coconut oil
  • ½ tsp of vitamin E
  • 15 drops of wild orange essential oil
  • 5 drops of peppermint essential oil

How to make it:

  • For each category of sugar scrub, just mix all the ingredients together and put them in little glass jars.
  • You can adorn the jars with cool designs or ribbon wrap them and then label the jars with an additional teacher tag.
  • You can buy the round labels from any stationary store and write on them with Fine Line Markers or print them.
  • For the lavender scrub, you’d label it calming and relaxing and for the orange & peppermint, you’d label it – uplifting and invigorating!
  • You can then attach a teacher tag on each jar with this little note – A little bit of sweet and gentle for your self-care.

Banana and Nutella Combo

Express your gratitude with this delectable combination of Bananas and Nutella. Pick up a bunch of bananas with a jar of Nutella from your nearest grocery store, a couple of tags, a few gel pens, some ribbon or twine. If you don’t find shaped tags, then just take a piece of paper, thick enough to hold as a tag/label, cut it into a circle shape and paste it on the jar lid. Hand write a message of your choice on the top or use this – “thanks a bunch! I can NUTELLA how much I am gr8ful to you!” complete the gift by tying a twine or a ribbon around the jar with a complementary card addressed to your teacher with your name on it.

Sharpie Appreciation

Buy a pack of sharpies (bright colored marker pens) from a stationary store or an online web store, and print a designed label template that can complement a colorful present to appreciate a teacher. Choose your design from a variety of pre-designed templates at onlinelabels.com, customise them with text of your choice, for instance – Thank you for coloring my life and making me a sharpie!, print the label and cut it to a shape of your choice, pasting it on the gift box or container you’ve shown to stack the pens. Sharpie markers are available in varying sets of 2-24 ranging between Rs. 250-1500.

Quilled Candle Holder

With an ancient art of rolling colorful papers into some amazing designs and shapes, you can now light up your teacher’s life by gifting her a set of Quilled Candle Holders.

For ease of reference you can use this video tutorial on instructables.com.

Quilling Holder

What you need:
  • A quilling tool
  • A transparent craft glue
  • Two tea light candles
  • 5 mm quilling strips of different colors
  • A cardboard
  • Plastic or CD disc


How to make it:
  • Mark the mid of the disc base.
  • Now, with the quilling tool, pick a color of your choice and roll the quilling strip into a tight coil, gluing it at the end, make enough coils to cover the round shape of the candle and glue it all together, placed next to each other forming a circle around the center of the disc.
  • Next, pick another color and roll it, release it a little to form a loose shape in comparison to the tight coils earlier.
  • You’ll need to make little hearts of paper, so pick different colors to pair up as hearts or same colors and make enough pairs to form a circle of hearts as the outer layer to the tight coils already in place.
  • You just need to press the circle coil on one side such that it becomes like a teardrop and pair it with another teardrop shape to form a heart.
  • Press the circles on one side and after that glue them together.
  • Varnish the finished holder with nail polish. Make the second holder in the same way and then place the tea-light candles in the center of the holders.
  • You can gift wrap them in a nice gift box or a transparent cellophane paper and tie it with a colorful ribbon and tag that says “Thank you for lighting up a child’s life”.

Pencil Pen Holder

Gift the teacher a unique handcrafted pencil/pen stand that she can use on her desk, and it will bring a smile to her and remind her of you, each time she uses it!

You can purchase the Gorilla Glue from evitamins.com for Rs.649.

For the stand you will need:
  • A tin can (could be a condensed milk can or fruit cocktail can of 2.75” diameter)
  • 33 colorful or single colored pencils with erasers at the end
  • Gorilla glue
  • Rubber bands
  • Ribbon
  • Cardstock
  • A pair of scissors
  • Coloured markers
  • Crafting glue


How to make it:
  • Before you begin, please ensure the pencils are an appropriate size so that they aren’t longer than the pens. You can cut them to a preferred length.
  • With the Gorilla glue, stick the pencils with the eraser side up, next to each other on the can and leave to dry by placing some rubber bands around the pencils overnight.
  • Next day, remove the rubber bands and wrap a ribbon around the pencils.
  • Then cut a sheet of foam in the shape of an apple with a stem and a leaf with colors of red, brown and green paper and a paste scallop shaped tag on top of the apple.
  • You can write the teacher’s name on the tag and paste the apple on the pencil stand with the glue. Attach a short note of gratitude in your handwriting and gift it to your teacher.

Dry Erase Task Board

For this one you can make a 'things-to-do' template yourself or print a pre-designed template from vertex42.com.

What you need:
  • A 8 x 10 photo frame (you can recycle an old frame in your house or buy it from the nearest photo studio)
  • A spray paint
  • A spray primer
  • Sandpaper (all available in a local hardware store)
  • 2-3 dry erase markers
  • Print out of ‘things to do’


How to make it:
  • Sand the edges of the frame lightly to rough up the surface, wipe it clean and then coat it nicely with primer.
  • Next, spray paint it in a color of your choice and leave it to dry.
  • Once dry, sand it lightly again.
  • You can now place the ‘to do’ list inside the frame.
  • Attach the dry markers on the side or at the back of the frame with a ribbon or blue tag and gift it to the teacher.

Teacher Survivor Kit

Teachers, like mothers have a thankless job of nurturing a child and developing a child’s confidence and intellectual skills and that’s no easy task! For those days when the teacher’s pressed for everything, needs an extra dose of caffeine, some supplements for the drain in her energy, relief from a headache or even a quick bite, this survival kit would be a blessing in disguise!

For the kit you will need some items and personalized one liners to add to each of them

  • A large plastic container, cotton wool (for times when you can’t hear yourself think)
  • Googly eyes (because sometimes you need them at the back of your head as well)
  • Eraser (to rub out their mistakes)
  • Pens (to write their wrongs)
  • Crayons (to always brighten your day)
  • Rubber band (to remind you to be flexible)
  • Mint (because you’re worth a mint)
  • Paper clips (for when you need help holding everything together)
  • A whistle (for when you need to catch their attention)
  • Gloves (when you need an extra pair of hands)
  • Band-Aid (to mend hurting hearts)
  • Snickers (to remind you to laugh)
  • Energy bars (for your necessary dose of vitamins)

A Thank You Letter

We forget just how important a teacher can be in a child’s life. Even though, school life is a non-stop roller coaster ride for teachers and students alike, there are certain times that stand out in our memories of our interaction and learning journey with our teachers. There’s nothing like a good old’ handwritten letter of gratitude, affection and inspiring memories your teacher won’t warm up to. Take out some time to pen down your thoughts of how your teacher has affected your life, what have you enjoyed learning about the most, or few choicest memories that have left an impression on you for life and what are some of the best things you liked in your teacher.

Teachers Have Personalities Too!

Like everyone else, teachers are humans with real feelings. They may have a strict personality, a firm demeanor or a less expressive nature, but they too have their personal interests, likes and dislikes. Gifts for teachers need not be just limited to desktop objects or knick-knacks! You choose things that are of practical use for them, either by way of enhancing the classroom experience for the students or one that makes the teachers’ work a little easier.

The gifts need not be expensive either. When you make choices like getting age-appropriate book sets for their class, stationary sets of pens, pencils or small notebooks or an annual photo album, it would not only serve a purpose but would be much appreciated as well.

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