When it comes to my son’s education, everything is new to me and I always feel like such a dimwit around the other parents who have done all this before with their older children. Azul is my first and I am constantly playing catch up with the other parents. I’m such an amateur, but play it off perfectly I’m sure! Uh huh.

He is now moving into the First Grade, which seems crazy enough, but not as traumatic as it was last year with him starting kindergarten. With all day school under our belts I felt as if everything was under control, and at the end of last year, there was even an end-of-year BBQ for the kids, teachers and parents, and I made it a point to introduce myself to his new first grade teacher. Of course things couldn’t be that simple and we found out two weeks before school starts, there would be a new first grade teacher and we could meet her at a Meet the Teacher event. I have never been to a Meet the Teacher event and didn’t realize there was protocol when attending. Mostly, I didn’t know I had to take a gift to the new teacher. I truly thought my child would be enough of a gift, apparently not.

This “gift for the teacher” thing seems a little like playing teacher’s pet, but okay I’ll do what we’re supposed to, and if we are going to be kissing up before school even starts we’re going to do it right.

What does a teacher want anyway? Well, against my best judgment, I decided not to take the open bottle of wine I had found, even though it was almost three-quarters of the way full. Wine was off the list, so I guess I’ll have a glass and keep thinking. My next idea was flowers. This might be going somewhere. What if we made flowers? That might be cute and show off Azul’s ability to color and kiss ass at the same time.

This is what you’ll need:

Box of pencils to use as stems
Flower templates
Crayons, markers or pencils– anything you want to use to decorate the flowers
Hole punch
Small vase

Step 1 – Search for 3” flower template on the internet. There are a ton of options to choose from, print them out and have your child color the flowers and cut them out.

Step 2 – Punch two holes in each decorated flower, one lower than the other and weave the stem (a.k.a the pencil) through.

Step 3 – Place your beautiful bouquet in a vase or vessel, maybe add a bow and a tag welcoming the teacher.

You have just made the perfect Meet the Teacher gift!