Thinking back on making gifts in school for family and holidays.

[Ruth n Jersey]

This past Mother's Day my 8 year old Grandson gave my daughter quite an elaborate photo album he made in school of pictures of himself holding flowers,throwing kisses, and many little poems he wrote to go along with all the photos. The cover was colored by him as well. At least 8 pages if not more and each page was covered with clear plastic. Made me think back of my gifts from a much simpler time. In one of the early grades we all had to bring in a small jar. I remember mine was from Prell shampoo. Weeks before, as we did out work, the teacher used a hole puncher and punched out tons of colored paper dots. Finally the day came, we were given a lump of school paste from a big jar that the teacher put on a scrap of paper with a tongue depressor. The boys ate most of theirs to show off. We then got out our jars and pasted the colored dots all over the jar in any design we wanted. This transformed out jar into a vase,along with a Happy Mother's Day note that we proudly presented to Mom. My Mom kept it for years.Most of the dots lost their color. Then there were the carnations made from tissues and of course the Valentines with the white doily, also a candle holder made from a tin pie plate, and who could forget the chains made from strips of red and green paper for the Christmas tree. Do you remember making gifts in school?

 

[Aunt Bea]

I remember planting marigold seeds in paper cups and watching them grow for eventual gifts on Mother's day, making lots of cards, a ceramic hand print, decorating cereal and shoe boxes for Valentines day mail boxes, lots of paper turkeys and pilgrim hats, paper snowflakes.

I think that getting kids into the habit of gift giving, thinking of others, etc... is very important. I remember the little conspiracies that we were involved in as kids when we made or purchased some small item for our parents and grandparents.