Teacher Appreciation Week Camping Theme
Teacher Appreciation Week is my favorite week of the school year! I love the opportunity it gives us to shine a light on the dedicated educators at my kids school.
At our school we celebrate teachers and staff, which I absolutely love. I feel it helps bring awareness to the fact that every person at the school is working toward success for these kids.
Coming up with a good appreciation theme can be hard! For the theme this year, I turned to my very creative friend Alia, from Party Like a Cherry. We used her theme idea from start to finish, so be sure to check out her post and her printables to come up with exactly the right Teacher Appreciation Week for your school. (read her post here)
Teacher Appreciation Week Decorations
When we decided to go with the camping and survival theme, I knew I wanted to keep it very woodsy with buffalo check print, wood slices, pine sprigs and bear paws. I created a balloon garland and cut out bear paw prints to adhere to a few of the balloons.
For the poster, I designed it using the free website Canva, but you can have the free download here. When you send it to the print shop just ask for a full color engineer print. It is 2’x 3’ and is usually less than $10! That’s a bargain!
At each table I started with a white table linen and layered a square of brown craft paper and a square of red and black buffalo check wrapping paper. My pine tree in the backyard donated pine sprigs for each table.
The finishing touch was a 4” x 6” picture frame with a fun message on it. You can download those table frame prints here.
Teacher Appreciation Week Schedule
I love a good themed invitation! I have this invitation printed and put one in each teacher box and we send it out digitally. This helps everyone not only know what to expect, but to get excited for the week to come!
We want them to know we have a really fun, special week planned. It also helps them know when they will have lunch provided so they don’t bring their own.
Teacher Appreciation Week Meals
I love yummy food. In fact, food is my love language. We do our best to show our love to the teachers and staff with the food we serve them.
Monday we set up a soda bar. If you’re in Utah, or familiar with Utah, you know how much we love our soda shops! There is one (or more) in every city! We include 2-liter sodas, fruit puree’s, flavored syrups, half & half and limes. The menu gives them drink combinations that are tested and delicious!
We paired the soda bar with homemade bear shaped sugar cookies in a cookie box so they could take them to-go. The gift tag on them says, “This year would have been un-bear-able without you!” and you can download that here.
Wednesday we set up a trail mix bar.
I used tin buckets and scoops from Dollar Tree and bought all the yummy things at Trader Joes and Costco!
It wasn’t a peanuts and m&m’s trail mix bar. We had
- dried coconut,
- white cheddar popcorn,
- dark chocolate sea salt caramels,
- chocolate covered peanut butter pretzels,
- kettle popcorn,
- dried mango,
- dried pineapple,
- shelled pistachios and more.
It was delux! The teachers absolutely loved it! We provided small styrofoam bowls for them to fill and because of the amount we purchased, we were able to set it out Thursday as well!
Friday we served a Lumberjack lunch. Boy was this delicious! I used this recipe for the pork. We served it on bakery hamburger buns and had Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce.
We also served salad, individual bags of chips, fruit and cans of soda.
The showstopper, in my opinion, were the s’mores cupcakes. We followed this recipe. and they were outstanding. I may have had 3. I’m not kidding.
I created my own table frame printables for each meal, and you can download them here. Alia also has some on her site available for print. Just follow the link to her site at the beginning of this post.
Teacher Appreciation Week Gifts
The gift committee had a lot of fun and provided some gifts that the teachers and staff genuinely loved!
Tuesday everyone received a Teaching Survival Kit. The printable came from Party Like A Cherry.
Thursday different groups received different gifts.
- For the office staff it was a cute s’mores kit in black buckets.
- For the principal, a custom printed shirt and his favorite treats.
- For the teachers, a book with notes from each of their students.
- For all other staff, the most delicious s’mores cookies were paired with a card good for a free drink at a local soda shop (see what I mean about us loving soda shops?!). The cute cookie gift tags can be found on Party Like A Cherry.
Whether you recreate the entire week for your school, or just print out the cookie tag for your child’s teacher, we hope you have found inspiration here today! We love those who have chosen education as their career and are grateful for the dedication they have to their students!
Do you have a editable version of the invitation for the week’s events? I’ll pay for that!
Thanks for the great ideas.