Gifts for the teacher

It's the end of another academic year. You might recall that at the end of the last academic year, Dinoboy asked me to make 3 zipaway totes for his teachers which were blogged about here, here and here.

Thankfully, this year we have just the one teacher to appreciate and since this teacher had been working with Dinoboy all year on his literacy skills, I thought she might like a journal jar ... as well as a bag of course! Here is the basket Dinoboy and I put together for her.



There is a pretty notebook tucked away behind the bag and the jar. The jar contains over 40 strips of paper. Each strip has a statement or a question on it. The idea is that Miss R (Dinoboy's teacher) would randomly select a strip of paper, stick it on a page in her pretty notebook and write a journal entry relating to what was written on the strip. The strips were geared towards teaching - so there are questions like: "who was your favourite junior school teacher and why?" or "Is anyone in your family and teacher and how have they inspired you to become a teacher?" or "When did you first become a teacher and why?" According to Dinoboy, Miss R really likes the journal jar.

As is traditional (for me and Dinoboy anyway), I made Miss R a bag. It's a foldaway shopping tote. We popped into The Cotton Patch and Dinoboy helped pick the fabrics (apparently, Miss R really likes purple).



The concept of this is very much like my foldaway shopping bag. This is a simple, lined tote with a squared off bottom. I used black 1 inch webbing for handles and the handles tuck into the bag before folding the bag up. The flap and poppers are done exactly like the foldaway shopping bag and I incorporated a bit of black piping too.



I really like this fabric combination and I think I might just have to make myself a bag with these fabrics (I actually have just about enough leftover fabric to make myself a bag).

I like the journal jar idea a lot. Dinoboy and I have discussed making a journal jar up for him to use over the summer vacation. He can pick a random strip whenever he fancies and write about it in a notebook. This way, he'll get some writing practise over the summer which will stand him in good stead when the new academic year starts again in the fall. He's decided I can make up either questions like: "who's your favourite tv character and why?" or "write about something fun you did today" or maybe even single words like "Pirate" or "Jungle" and he'll use that as a theme for a story.

School finished really early today so I treated Dinoboy to a nice lunch and we did a spot of shopping - actually I did a spot of shopping. Dinoboy just trailed along contemplating what he could spend his meagre pocket money on.

I'm going to get myself a cup of tea now and plan what bag I want to make for myself over the weekend. What are your plans for the weekend?

Have a great weekend, friends.