Holiday Gift Exchange Ideas for the Classroom

As the holidays draw near, I'd like to share a few ideas for teachers:

• Have parents donate to a game fund for your classroom instead of buying you gifts. Allow a volunteer to collect the donations so parents who spend very little don't have to feel obligated and you won't know who donates.
• Divide students into small groups and have each small group choose a game for the classroom.  Parents can donate to purchase a game for each group. Students could have a contest and a fundraiser --let parents know you are doing this instead of exchanging gifts. Students share their "game" as a gift to the other groups. 
• Ask for a classroom budget to purchase educational games and present them as "gifts for all of us."
• With the economic crunch, collect suggestions from parents about how to save money on gifts. Get students enthused and participating.
  
• Create a fun gift exchange with special rules like "spend no more than $0.92 or $2.009 cents.

Well, summer is here. It's time to think about some summer school options. It's nice outside, perhaps someone has some games that help reinforce multiplication tables or addition and subtraction practice? Help me, teachers!

Added a few links!

We've been adding a few links over the last several weeks. We rearranged the high school English section and even added a link to our webstore. Next goal is to organize the elementary science section into useful categories. Any ideas?

Not a Blogger

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Once a week... yeah... well.
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If you find cool ideas, do post them here.
I'll check in now and then.