Teacher Appreciation Week at daycare

I think we all know that what most teachers want is another good paperweight shaped like an apple. Or another picture frame shaped like a chalkboard.

But since I couldn't find 12 of those, I had to come up with something a little different this year for Teacher Appreciation Week at our daycare center.

I found a cute idea on How Does She ... and ran with it. I bought a dozen little metal pails and watering cans at the Dollar Tree and filled them up with black beans.

I think the black beans cost more than the metal pails did, frankly. And also, I didn't find the black beans until the third store I tried ... which leads me to believe that other moms had seen this idea on Pinterest and beaten me to the beans.

Anyway, this step took approximately three minutes.

Then I took three dozen flower pens I'd ordered from Amazon (they were slightly over $1 each, but I got them at Amazon because the Dollar Tree didn't have any) and stuck three of them in each pail. That step took another three minutes.

To cut costs, you could easily go with one pen per pail.

Just looking at the little smiley faces on the pens made me grin. Happy pens! Also, very hard to walk off and leave one ... I'm thinking you don't lose these very often.

It made the happiest little garden on our kitchen table for several hours!

And I think our teachers liked them, too.