Appreciating Our Volunteers

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

-Winston Churchill

I don't know about your school, but we have some absolutely amazing volunteers at our school.  We have a group of three wonderful ladies that run copies, make whatever you need, cut things out, and pretty much anything you can name for our entire school.  All we do is put what we need in a box and in a few hours we come back and poof, it's magically done!  This wonderful group is made up of Mary, a retired teacher; Sally, the mom of one of our teachers; and Isela, a parent of one of our students.  They are such a fantastic group...and they've been known to take things home to work on them.  Talk about dedication!

I also have a couple of fabulous volunteers that work with just my class.  They, along with another parent, run our Sight Word Celebrities program for second grade.

So once a year we get together to honor all of the volunteers at our school.

Each volunteer receives an invitation.

 Then we decorate our library to match our theme.  We have done a super hero theme, a Hollywood theme, a western theme, a tea party theme, and this year my principal asked for a garden theme.  

(If we didn't live in Las Vegas where it almost touched 100 degrees that day, we would have had the party outside in our courtyard.)

Here are some pictures from our event.

 We purchased flowers from one of our local stores, added tissue paper and put them in cups.  For a finishing touch we added these signs to rulers and placed them in the plants.

The food came from Sam's Club and we collected up the decorations from some of our homes.  

(OK, my home.)  

We purchased a few things from Michael's.  

(You have to love 60% off plus your teacher discount!) 

The volunteers that service the whole school received bigger plants and gift cards.

We always have our students sing a song or two, which usually brings a tear to each volunteer's eye.  

My principal is the master of ceremonies, giving recognition to each volunteer.

If you don't do something special like this for your volunteers, I highly suggest it.  Volunteers are so precious to us.  I know our school would never run smoothly without them.