Pre-K Graduation

In June, the girls had a closing ceremony to end their pre-school program.  I snuck out during the day to attend the ice-cream social.  They started with some songs to perform for the families.

 Then the students were called up to received their binder which contained some performance markers completed during the year and a gift bucket of chalk and books from their teachers Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Paap as well as the PTSA.

I really struggled with what kind of gift we would give their teachers.  Since I've seen the unnecessary gifts that my sisters have received as elementary teachers and I truly despise unnecessary consumer purchasing which leads to waste.  You know I like to be crafty, but I know that not everyone appreciates hand-made items and those can be unappreciated and waste as well. 

So I kept thinking about what Mrs. Johnson would like so that my girls could offer a gift to serve as a token of our appreciation for the year.  They really did like her a lot and I thought it important to give thanks.  At the same time, I had started excavation of our pond and kind of forgot the gift thing until the night before the closing ceremony!!  There I was, standing in the middle of muck as I was trying to save the gazillion tadpoles that were living in the pond when I had the perfect solution. 

~I save jars because Ezra and the girls like collecting wildlife. 

~I had pulled and composted TONS of pond plants, but had some that I was saving.

~I had a ton of rocks from the excavation.

~I was standing in the middle of tadpole central!

So I quickly got all family members involved and we ended up with a sweet little portable aquarium for both teachers.  In each jar, we put in one tadpole that had already started to develop legs and one that hadn't started to metamorph.  We also added rocks, plants and a snail.

When the girls handed the jars to their teachers, I quickly jumped in to say that they could certainly just put them in the pond behind the school if they didn't want the responsibility of caring for them. Both teachers said they wanted to show their children and Mrs. Johnson said she had her own pond at home where she'd put them once they metamorphed. 

In fact, we ran into Mrs. Johnson at the bank recently and she continued to talk about what had happened with the two tadpoles and that her son enjoyed the gift as well.  I was happy as a peach to hear her say that our little gift was so appreciated.