Teacher appreciation week

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    Teacher appreciation week is next week! I decided to give each of my children's teacher a succulent for teacher appreciation week. This year has been hard on students and teachers with all the changes and covid protocols. My kids teachers have been so wonderful at helping my children when they struggle and communicating with us about what is going on. Teachers have worked hard this year making sure our children can still have fun and trying to make their school experience as normal as possible. They encourage our children, cheer them on, celebrate their successes, and pick them up when they are sad. They love them and keep them safe when we aren't there and they do all this while trying to teach them math, science, social studies, reading, and spelling. They deserve so much and I wanted to give them a small something to show our appreciation. I had a couple cute ideas for pots to go along with our succulents. One was to do finger prints on a pot and the other was to put Thanks for helping me grow on a pot. I decided to combine the ideas. I had to get enough succulents and pots for 7 teachers. 

I found 2 medium sized containers with hen and chicks in them for $5 a piece at Walmart and once separated their were 8 decent sized succulents between the two pots. Then I found 4" terra cotta pots for 78 cents at Menards. 

I started off spraying the inside of the terra cotta pot with Rust-oleum Clear gloss sealer. This keeps the paint on the outside from bubbling when you water your succulent. Then I used acrylic paint marker to write Thanks for helping me grow on the pot. I put Apple barrel acrylic paint on a paper plate for the kids to dip their fingers in. This part got a little messy. My 5 year old wanted to smear the paint on the pot, make dots, and designs. In the end I figured her teachers would love it even if it wasn't exactly what I had imagined. My 6 year old did a better job but still smeared a little. I haven't got to do it with my 9 year olds yet. After the acrylic paint dries I sprayed Rust-oleum sealer on the outside of the pot. 

Spraying sealer on the terra cotta pot helps to protect the paint and paint pen, but does effect porous nature of the pot. After using sealer terra cotta are no longer porous and are more similar to ceramic pots. This means they will not need to be watered as often because they will dry out slower. 

Then I added soil and the hen and chicks to their pots. They turned out really cute and the kids are really excited to give them to their teachers next week.