An Apple Soda for the Teacher Back to School Gift

My kids went back to school last week. I know that sounds crazy to those of you who don’t start until after Labor Day and it feels a little crazy to me. Our summers are short–less than two months–so we spend the 1st half recovering from the previous school year and the 2nd half gearing up for the next one. Still, I like to do a few fun traditions in the midst of the flurry of school supply shopping and uniform hunting. Last year I sent my kids back to school with actual apples for their teachers, decorated with stickers that I designed.

I guess we were feeling a bit less-healthy this year, but still love the nostalgic nod to apples, so we gave them Apple soda!

My husband had brought home some apple soda from one of the Mexican grocery stores in the area a while back and we all thought it was pretty yummy! I was excited to find these glass bottles of apple soda at Food City (grocery store in AZ). If you can’t easily find apple soda, I’m sure they would still like sparkling apple cider.

I attached a green striped straw with washi tape and bakers twine–green because it would resemble the stem of the apple. Washi tape, twine, chalkboards and straws to I could cram as many trendy items into one teachers gift as possible!

Honestly, I had planned to make printable tags, but I don’t currently have a working printer, so that wouldn’t have been helpful to me. The chalkboards were a last minute bit of late-night desperinspiration. I had bought the little chalkboard labels from the Dollar Spot at Target to use in my pantry organization, but since I haven’t been ready to eat that elephant yet, they were just hanging around. I slapped those on the bottles and used a white ink pen to write my message. Just be careful with those sweaty fingers. The chalk ink will come off when wet and I think my youngest’s gift was pretty smudged by the time she presented it to her teacher. Still, I think the teachers loved them and were sufficiently buttered up to like my children…at least for a few days.

Let’s not forget the obligatory first day of school pics. It’s strange to be sending most of my kids off to school this year. My favorite pics were the ones I took the year I used the mini chalkboards as props, but those have since been reassigned to my pantry, so we did the notebook paper thing again this year. (This is the quickest thing to do, since they have to have notebooks anyway.)

I can’t believe how much they are growing up! Don’t remind me how close 8th grade is to high school and how close high school is to college and leaving home! But they were pretty excited to start school and had an “awesome” first couple of days. Stay tuned and I will show you the special treat I had waiting for them after their first day of school.

Do your kids take anything to the teacher on the first day of school?