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Gift Giving For Kids: The Benefits, Even When It’s Hard

Gift giving for kids: The benefits

Every Christmas, birthday, and other gift-giving holidays I drag my kids to the store to help them pick out gifts for friends, teachers, siblings, and more. 

Maybe saying “I drag my kids” is the wrong way to phrase this. More like… “My kids drag me” to the store. I know it’s important and such a great learning moment for my kids, but let’s be honest, it’s hard! And a lot of work on the parent’s end. So why do we do it?? Why don’t we just buy the gift on our own time and slap their name on it? 

Because there’s no learning in doing it that way. 

It is hard and a lot of work to take the time to teach our kids the value and benefit of gift-giving, but they learn so much from it. 

Like genuine love for another person. 

And that others have needs that they can help meet. 

They learn empathy through gift-giving. 

And how to genuinely care for someone else. 

It gives them a chance to think about and ponder the person they want to get a gift for. 

It brings out the happiness in them that you can only get when giving gifts. 

Their confidence is given a boost as well when they watch the receiver open the gift. 

And it teaches them grace and proper reactions for their own gift receiving. 

This list is just a small amount of what goes on in the process of gift-giving with kids, so of course, it’s worth it! Maybe this list is more for me, but hopefully when you’re in the trenches of Target trying to settle on a good gift for your children’s grandparents, just remember the lessons they are learning are absolutely priceless and will stay with them through the rest of their lives. 

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#GoGreek Interview: Liz Hansen

#gogreek interview Liz Hansen

Welcome to our #GoGreek series! This blog series focuses on interviewing past and present members of sororities and fraternities. We are able to learn more about their experiences and ask them questions to help others learn more about the Greek world, bust stigmas, and find out if Greek life is right for you. Check out all of our #GoGreek interviews here. 

Today we are interviewing Liz Hansen. Liz is a member of Alpha Chi Omega at Marquette. Not only is she part of Greek life, but she was also a recipient of our 2019 Design a Better Future scholarship! 

Liz was drawn to Alpha Chi Omega because she loved their philanthropy. It really impressed her how she could impact her community not only nationally, but locally as well. She also loved that the girls involved in Alpha Chi Omega were genuine and helped her become the best version of herself. 

What drew you to Greek life?

At Marquette, all sororities have to have a service component as well as a social component, which I thought was great. I am a big believer in being involved in the community and it seemed like a good way to do so at college. Alongside that, I wanted to push myself to grow as a person and I could tell that any of Marquette’s sororities would help me do such. 

What is your philanthropy and what effect does serving this philanthropy have on your life?

Our philanthropy is domestic violence awareness, and I have learned so much from being involved with our philanthropy. I never truly understood how big of an issue domestic violence is until I joined AXO. Through volunteering at a local women’s shelter, I have also seen how it impacts people up close, as well as the Milwaukee community. We also stress the importance of understanding what is and is not a healthy relationship, whether romantically or just as friends. That knowledge is so applicable every day, and I feel like I’ve become a better friend from it. 

Liz’s advice for anyone considering joining a sorority or fraternity is to make sure that your values align with the organization and also allow you space to grow as a person in your time there. 

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Helping You Offset Classroom Costs

Extra pencils
Crayons
Highlighters
Sticky notes
Anchor charts
Bulletin board supplies
Sticky tack
Pens
Dry erase markers and erasers 
Classroom books

Just a small list of must-haves at the start of a new school year for teachers, no matter how long they’ve been teaching! Supplies wear out, get lost, or break and every year a new list must be written. But where’s the flaw in this? Teachers aren’t buying these supplies and turning in their expense reports to the principal to be reimbursed. They aren’t turning their lists of supplies into the secretary to order, either. Teachers are paying out of pocket for their supplies each year, and let’s be honest, they don’t get paid enough to do that! 

It’s a broken system, and it’s unfair to teachers everywhere. But until something changes, here are a few tips to keep your personal costs down when it comes to supplying your classroom with what it needs. 

Make a list of wants vs needs. Do you NEED borders for your bulletin boards in order for your students to learn and grow? No! If you are able to buy them, great! If not, don’t stress. Have your students create some for you! Be very reasonable with yourself on what your classroom wants and what it actually needs. 

Ask family, friends, and neighbors to donate to your classroom. Creating an Amazon wishlist is a great option for them to know exactly what you need and gives them the ability to support you in an easy, convenient way. Read more about #ClearTheList here. 

Enlist parents of your students to help. Tell them your classroom needs and give them the option to donate if they can! 

DIY instead of buy! Target has great book bins, but a quick Pinterest search gives you plenty of ideas on how to make them yourself out of recycled material. Bonus that you are recycling! 

Create a Donors Choose to help raise funds for the bigger projects/ needs of your classroom. 

Reach out to your school and district to see what they are willing to supply and what else falls on you. Some schools are willing to chip in a certain amount of supplies and some schools are not able to supply anything. It’s worth it to ask! 

What else do you do to offset the costs of school supplies for your classroom? 

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Questions To Ask At Parent-Teacher Conferences

Parent-teacher conferences can be an overwhelming time for parents. What do I need to be prepared for? What will my child’s teacher say about them? And one of the most daunting questions- what questions do I ask? Here is a list of thought-provoking questions you can bring to parent-teacher conferences with you to get the most out of your experience. 

How is his/her/their social development? 

Are there any concerns I should have? 

What can I do to support my child’s academics at home? 

What can I do to support you as my child’s teacher? 

Is your classroom in need of any school supplies? 

What is something my child did really well this week/month? 

What type of workload can we expect from this class moving forward? 

What strengths and weaknesses does my child have in your classroom? 

And then of course questions specifically for you:

What is the best way to get in contact with you if I need anything? 

Can I talk to you about this concern I have? 

Do you know about this situation my son/daughter has going on at home?  

Is there anything else going on in the classroom that I need to know about?

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Fall and Halloween Themed Crafts and Activities For All Ages

fall school activities for all ages

Being a teacher during Halloween is a whole new ball game, especially if you’re teaching in an elementary setting. If you’re needing crafts and activities to get you through these next few weeks before the big day, here’s a quick list of some, with all different age ranges, difficulties, and times. 

Our personal favorite, but one that can take a lot of time and work, is a giant tape-resistant spider web art. It can be a great individual activity on a smaller scale or a few bigger, collaborative pieces for the whole class. This activity originates from Busy Toddler. 

There’s always your classic bowling with pumpkins activity. The pins can be anything from plastic pins found online or two-liter recycled bottles. As long as a small pumpkin is being used to knock them over, that’s all that matters! 

Investigating pumpkins is always a great activity as well. This can be as open-ended or guided as needed for your class, but opening, discovering, touching, squishing, sorting, and smelling each part of a pumpkin can be such a great hands-on activity. 

A good old-fashioned vinegar and baking soda reaction with a touch of green or purple food coloring can make a great witches brew. 

A great Halloween craft to talk about and learn more about anatomy is making a skeleton out of q-tips. 

photo from mombrite.com

Simple seek n find or color pages are easy to download (legally!) and use this time of the year. 

For the younger kids, washing pumpkins is a great sensory activity. 

To see a great list of Halloween/Fall-themed books, head here. 

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A Peek Into The Alpha Phi Scholarship Foundation

alpha phi scholarship program spotlight

Not only is Alpha Phi an incredible organization for the service and leadership they provide, but they also offer scholarships for academics. The stories that come from the students receiving the scholarships are incredibly moving and absolutely worth noting. They have been offering them since 1959 and continue to do so today. 

Alpha Phi is aware of the rising costs of higher education and wants to assist its members with funding it as much as possible. 

“Samantha Bliss Mullin (Theta Tau–Rensselaer) shared that although she “knew it was a good decision to get a graduate degree, the reality of the cost of education was pretty daunting.” Now able to focus on her graduate research and worry less about her financial obligations with the help of a Alpha Phi Foundation scholarship in 2017, Samantha went on to finish graduate degree on an accelerated track.”

-Alex Goodman alphaphifoundation.org

They are able to fund these scholarships through generous donations, mostly from the alumni of Alpha Phi. You can read more of Alex’s story highlighting their scholarship program on their website.

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An Update on Our 2019 Scholarship Winner: Anthony Neil Tan

We reached out to Anthony Neil Tan this spring for an update on his Maker Hub Club and where they are today. He did such a great job highlighting their accomplishments that I will let you read it directly from him, instead of paraphrasing it for you! You can see the post on him as a scholarship winner here.

From Anthony:

💸Our student maker funding program called Instructor Awards, where students write an Instructable teaching others how to make something and receive reimbursement for material expenses.

  • Custom Gaming Keypad With RGB 
  • How to Refurbish an Old Skateboard

💻We taught an 8-week virtual Arduino Programming Workshop to 10 students hailing from across the nation

⚙️We held monthly Makers Meetings to foster community and held engaging activities

  • We held an April Fools Prank challenge where two winners were awarded with a $25 Amazon gift card each.
  • Check out a video on one of the winning projects here.

🎉We got t-shirts and keychains to spread our spirit and pride in what we do!

  • We got 26 t-shirts (16 for volunteers and 10 as prizes for our student maker spotlights and for our special awards recipients in the 2021 InventorsFair, which we participated in as judges.) 

🎤We participated in Makers + Mentors’ Make For All Commitments in support of maker-centered learning!

  • I’ll be a guest speaker at the Make For All Commitments Celebration event, representing Maker Hub Club and speaking about the wonderful experiences of being a student maker.

✔️We are rebranding to Student Makers because we feel this organization name truly resonates with our commitment to serving the student makers community!