Also, consider helping teachers set up their own Classroom Holiday Gift List on www.teacherlists.com. It works something like a wedding registry, allowing parents to select and purchase a classroom gift online.
Classroom Gift Ideas:
- Art Supplies: The brightly colored designs in Roylco’s Animals and Creature Paper lend themselves to a world of wildlife-theme possibilities, including origami, murals, masks, and more. (preschool-elementary grades; $10.99) Big stencils mean big fun! The Roylco Mega Stencils with pop-out templates come in a set of eight, making it simple for kids to have hours of fun with paint, chalk, and colored pencils. (preschool-elementary grades; $17.99)
- Social Studies: Children will enjoy learning or enhancing their map skills with Creative Teaching Press Map Skills workbooks, a series that uses age-appropriate maps for practicing skills like using latitude and longitude, locating places on a grid, estimating distances using scale, and more. (grades 2-6; $11.54-$35.68) Just about every classroom could use the House of Doolittle Laminated World Map. At 50 inches x 33 inches, the map has write-on/wipe-off capability and includes national capitals, major cities, rivers, time zones, and major peak elevations. What’s more, the heavy lamination will last for years. (elementary-middle grades; $28.55)
- Science: The Dowling Magnetics Super Science Magnet Kit contains everything students need to explore the science of magnetic forces, including a lodestone, the Earth’s only natural magnet. (grades 3 and up; $23.18) Based on a NASA Space Shuttle experiment to study ants in zero gravity, the Fascinations Toys and Gifts Antworks Space Age Ant Habitat Set contains a nontoxic translucent gel that acts as the tunnel medium for the ants as well as their food and water source—providing hours of good (and clean) fun and instruction. (grades 2-6; $1.83)
- Math: For students learning the fundamentals of money, the Didax Money Sudoku Game contains everything needed to complete 10 challenging Sudoku puzzles, including 32 realistic coins, 10 full-color game boards, and an answer key. (early elementary grades; $11.99) Teaching shapes and sizes is easier (and more fun) with Learning Resources Mini GeoSolids, a set of 32 colorful plastic geometric pieces in four sizes of eight shapes: triangular prism, cube, cone, cylinder, rectangular prism, hexagonal prism, triangular pyramid, and square pyramid. (preK-elementary grades; $14.99)
- English/Language Arts: Teachers can help boost middle graders’ vocabulary and reading comprehension skills with the Didax Cloze Middle Grades Activity Books, which include more than 150 pages in a three-book set, plus a free book of spelling essentials. (elementary-middle grades; $29.35) Give young readers a boost with Didax Rhyming Words Matching Puzzle Cards, a 30-card puzzle set that helps students with word recognition as well as vocabulary development and rhyming. (grades K-3; $13.99)