Best Teacher Appreciation Gifts: My 4 Favorite DIY Teacher Gifts

Sharing is caring!

Go beyond standard teacher gifts with these 4 end of year teacher gift ideas. My 4 favorite cheap and creative teacher appreciation gifts.

Can you believe the end of the school year is quickly approaching?!

If your kids are anything like mine, they’re anxiously waiting the arrival of summer.

And if you’re anything like me, you’re gathering ideas on how to keep them entertained (may I suggest my Giant Frisbee Tic Tac Toe and Gigantic Backyard Yadrzee to start)!

My 4 Best Teacher Gift Ideas (DIY + Affordable)

If you’re looking for some small and sweet gifts to give to your kids’ teachers or student teachers, I’m here to help!

These are all ideas I’ve done over the years, so I can confirm they are seriously appreciated!

Grab the kids and your craft supplies and enjoy putting something sweet together for those teachers who have spent so much time with our children, teaching them, molding them into the smarties they are.

Without further ado, here are some of my favorite teacher appreciation gifts from over the years!

Wooden Sign Teacher Appreciation Gift

One really fun teacher gift I’ve made over the years uses these adorable teacher appreciation flashcards from Urban Bliss Life.

If you want to keep things simple, print them out on heavy cardstock and give them with a gift of brownies, cookies, or muffins.

If you want DIY the heck out of this year’s teacher gift, keep reading! I decided to make a wooden sign gift for my kids’ teachers because I have a slight addiction to upcycling cabinet doors into wall art.

For this project, I spray-painted a narrow kitchen cabinet door that I had using a nice blue paint. 

Then I printed out the flashcards onto regular copy paper and cut them out by hand. To stick them onto the cabinet door, I used 1 heavy coat of Mod Podge.

Easy, and very cute and customized! It’s a nice decoration for the classroom that the teacher will be able to use for years into the future.

Teacher Subway Art

This piece of subway art is another fun art-themed gift for a teacher. I got the free download from eighteen25, and printed it out at home.

While we just framed it and gave it as it, there’s a ton you could do with it.

One really fun idea would be to Mod Podge it onto a clipboard, which the teacher can use in the classroom. You could also make a fun sign out of it…the possibilities are endless!

Teacher Gift Card Project

Of course, gift cards are always appreciated. Who doesn’t love choosing their own gift and spending a gift card?

While I know my kids teachers have really appreciated getting gift cards over the years, I also find them a bit impersonal. Which is why I came up with this DIY gift card envelop project for our teacher gift cards.

We’ve been doing this as an end-of-the-year teach appreciation gift for a couple years now and it’s always a huge hit!

About 3 years ago I went to Michael’s and stocked up on chipboard booklets.

 Then I cut some scrapbook paper to fit the chipboard booklet, as well as a piece of plain paper to fit on top which my kids could write on. I attached the paper and the gift cards using double-sided tape, and had my kids write up some captions for each page.

I love how it turned out and so did the teacher! The gift cards are each for $5, so including the chipboard booklet (which I spent $21 on), the first year we did this only cost us $21 for a teacher who was highly deserving!

And as our budget has gotten a bit more comfortable, we’ve added a few extra pages over the years.

Over the years, we’ve tailored some of the gift cards for the specific interests of that teacher.

Some teachers get a gift card to Pet Smart that says, “Spend time with your dog!”

Some get one to a sports store that says, “Play baseball with your kids.”

And on and on! We try to include something specific to each teacher if we can!

Our teachers have just loved these little books!

We’ve had teachers take our kids and start going around the school showing other teachers the book. One teacher even started crying, and who cries over gift cards?!

It’s just that personal touch that sets it apart!

Coffee Themed Teacher Gift

Few people are more excited for the start of summer than teachers everywhere. I’ve worked in many an elementary school and have seen it first-hand. And have also experienced it myself while working as a classroom aide!

It’s contagious and the break is so well-deserved. They appreciate every moment they have during the summer to savor life, and I like to send them off with a little gift that helps them do just that!

While most families give their teacher gift on the last day of school, I like to give this fun coffee gift in the weeks leading up to the last day of school, so the teacher has the energy to make it through those frantic last weeks!

This little Make It Through to the End of Year Teacher Gift that includes instant coffee in a fun teacher coffee mug that I made, plus a book for some summer reading and a gift card our teacher will hopefully use to splurge on herself!

I used a 651 vinyl that is safe for handwashing and cut it with my Silhouette for the coffee mug. Here is the image if you want to use the same fonts that I did. You could even just print this out on cardstock and attach to your gift basket with a decorative mug instead!

You could even take it a step further than me and make some cookies to include in your gift basket! Your teacher will loooove it!!

Final Thoughts About the Best DIY Teacher Gifts

Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of making loads of different creative gifts for teachers. If you want to go beyond standard ideas and are looking for a personalized teacher gift, I hope you liked these ideas for my 4 favorite end of year teacher gifts I’ve made.

And if you did like this post, please share it!