Here's what we did last year. We made accordion flowers, which I learned from A Happy Mum.
This is the best photo I had as I couldn't get Aly to stand still!
This year, I actually got my inspiration for the gift from our recent visit to the Dreamworks Animation Exhibition. There was an interactive section at the exhibition where you could make your own Thaumatropes. A Thaumatrope is actually a toy, which has a disk with a picture on each side. For the one we made, the disc was attached to a straw and when you twist the straw between your hands real fast, the two pictures will appear to blend into one.
Here's the Thaumatrope we made at the exhibition.
So for our Teachers Day gift, we substituted the straw with a pen, decorated the disc and wrote a thank you message on it.
We found these really colourful and fun looking pens at Daiso.
First we cut out the discs. It would be better to use a card material, or something that was stiffer. The paper that we had was not very hard, so we stuck two together to make them stiffer.
Next would be to decorate the discs. Aly wanted to paint them but you could really decorate them any way you wanted.
After the paint dried, we used glue to stick two discs together, so that it would be stiffer.
Then, we added stickers on one side.
And wrote a Thank You message on the other side. Aly wrote these with me holding her hand of course. Lol. I added some washi tape from my old scrapbooking stash and Aly added more stickers.
And lastly, we made two slits at the bottom of the disc, using a pen knife/craft knife, and attached the pens to it.
And here's the final product! It doesn't look very neat, but at least you could tell that it was made by Aly, and well... it's the thought that counts!
Happy Teachers' Day to all teachers!
