Educational Aides Appreciation Week

At our school we always do an Educational Aide's Appreciation Week either right before Teacher's Appreciation Week or after.

You may call yours ParaPros or something else, but whatever you call them, you know they are very valuable and probably aren't getting paid for all that they do. So we team up in our building and two teachers take one day during the week to do something special for all 8 of our EA's. (There jobs are library aide, kindergarten aide, title one aides, playground aides, lunchroom aides, and most also help in the classroom too.)

This year we had the kids decorate diecut hands. It's a great way to use up all those last bits of sequins, pom poms, etc that you have left over from something else.

)

The kids brainstormed adjectives that described each of these ladies and we wrote those words on the back of the hands.

Next I glued some ribbon on some clay pots and tied bows on them.

Then I hot glued Popsicle sticks or skewers to each hand.  I put some green floral foam in the bottom of each pot and stuck the sticks in it. I also put some green shredded raffia in to make it look like grass!

I used my Cricut to make name tags for each person. 

WA-LA! Now they are done!

 Do you do something to celebrate the tons that those staff members do for you? I'd love to hear about it. 

I just posted a freebie on TPT that you might want to grab especially if your year is coming to an end SOON!

I don't think the preview is very clear, so I wanted 

you to be able to see it here.

I give each child a mini flashlight on the last day of school to encourage them to read all summer long. It's a lot of fun to read under a blanket or in a dark room and many of my kids don't have a flashlight to call their own. Please grab one of these to use for your kids. (You'll be able to put your own name in the wooden sign at the bottom of the page!)

Patty