My daughter has been a 6th grade teacher for 7 years now. Currently she treasures the home-made ornaments from her students. (Mainly because she asked me to make some for her special teachers when she was that age.) She just put up her tree and has put them all on her tree. So how long has this teacher been teaching? I would say to stay away from coffee mugs, travel mugs because they have a lot on them. Wish list supplies are always greatly appreciated. One of the parents had an excess of office supplies because they were closing an office, so they donated legal sized photo copy paper, large envelopes, and various other items and the way the teachers reacted you would have thought it was Christmas morning.

I am a KDG teacher. I will say that, since I never have any time to bake during the month of Dec., I always appreciate the baked goods. Other fun items have been car wash tokens, holiday paper plates, cups, and napkins, chap sticks, items for my classroom like markers, pens, stickers, and I have every ornament children have given me over the years. I imagine mug rugs, etc. would be appreciated as well...just NO mugs! LOL

You're idea's are great and very thoughtful. I taught kindergarten and appreciate every gift I ever recieved. The ornaments were my favorite. I alway added the students name and date to them. made them ever more special to me

Laugh when i seen no mugs!!! Believe it or not I ended up right before I tired with 19 mugs. kept them all till recently. felt bad getting rid of them. BUT and shame on me gave them to my Grandchildren to give their teachers. they filled them with candy.

Have made corn bags, fleece scarfs, fleece hats with just the small hole to see, cool wrap thingy for runners or athletes for my kids teachers. They all loved them and often asked if I could make for friends or relatives. I also occasionally gave them to the lunch ladies and custodians. The head custodian would let me know when it was time for the fleece hat, since we get so much snow it was very appreciated.

Now that my youngest is in 10th and have a senior they "flip" if I want to send stuff in.

I don't want you to think that any gift is "unappreciated". Some teachers have less than 25 students per year and some have more than 200. Just think what that means for some of them. I have friends who received 15+ mugs/year and large numbers of ornaments. (Ornaments are special, but at my house only my children's ornaments make my tree or I would need a forest.) After 20 years, well, it gets a little overwhelming.

Some of our answers are definitely showing our geographic regions. If snow falls in my part of the US, we shut down the city so no need for hats, scarfs or any fleecy things. We laugh and tell people we have 2 temperatures, hot and HOT. We had a cold front yesterday and the temperature dropped to 75 for a high today.

I like this idea. It makes a lot of sense for some classrooms. My students borrowed my technical books as reference resources. I can't remember any parent except one (who actually wrote the book) giving me one because they are hundreds of dollars. I figured that if I was writing their college recommendations they could read on their own.

I am a bit shell shocked by some of the answers. As a former teacher, I can say that the gifts I received from my students touched me to no end. Maybe because I taught in an extremely poor area and realized how important they felt after giving me something.

One of my most fondest gifts was a baby shower present I received. It was an obviously well used winter baby coat. After checking with the parent that I was supposed to receive this present, I gladly used it with my child. BTW, lol the parent had no clue that the gift

was given. I gave suggestions based on my experience as a parent not as a teacher.

My mom in the 50s always made pressed Santa face cookies and the kids got to decorate. (the decorations got better each year.) Then we packaged them in clear wrap and gave them away to everyone that needed a present. These cookies were large, around 4 inches tall, and pretty delicious.

I am almost 60 and still fondly remember this Christmas project. I dont remember most presents but remember what we did as a tradition.