gifts

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gifts
By sandy

I've been through the same questions in the past. Here's what we do. Like the poster above, with our staff we have a "secret santa" exchange the week before the holidays. Small gifts each day Mon-Thurs. and larger gift
(around $10) on Friday. We exchange these at a before school staff breakfast that day.
We also were buying for our grade level colleagues until a few years ago we decided that it was just too much. Instead, we buy a larger gift for our birthdays (there are 4 of us together). We take turns shopping for the birthday gift and chip in to cover the cost (usually about $10). This eliminates

the hassle of lots of shopping for lots of occasion, allows us to be a little more creative, and seems to make everyone happier in general.
For my kids, I buy the personalized packs of pencils (78 cents at Atlas pen and pencil co.). Then I also give them a small notepad (I think they're on sale at Walgreens this week) with a holiday sticker on the front. They really like this gift. If you want to get really creative, you can make notepads for each student using a graphics program. That way you can use pictures to show the things they are interested in. I've done this in the past, but unless you're having them professionally "padded" or bound, they're difficult to bind.