10 Pocket Money Friendly Ideas for End of Year Teacher Gifts *

AD/GIFTED | The last day of term at the end of the school year is a funny one. It marks a milestone in a child’s education, the start of the Summer holidays, and the onset of mild/severe panic most parents will identify with… It’s also a time when many children like to say thank you to their teachers by giving them end of year teacher gifts. Wine and flowers are obvious choices, but there are so many independent retailers and small businesses you can support, with a huge range of pocket money friendly gorgeous goodies. So, what do you give a teacher at the end of the year?

Are End of Year Teacher Gifts Necessary?

Personally, yes, I think they are. Your child’s teacher or form tutor have taught your child – and probably around 30 other kids – for an entire year. One. Whole Year. 30+ kids. (Just let that sink in for a moment). They’ve also faced frequent disruptions to their classroom teaching schedules as well, thanks to the lingering effects of COVID-19. Surely, it’s not unreasonable to say thank you for all their hard work and care with a small, inexpensive teacher appreciation gift?

What are Good End of Year Teacher Gifts?

Much like a Secret Santa gift, setting a smaller budget means you don’t need to go mad – Flora (my daughter) and I set ourselves a gift budget of £20.00, excluding P&P. Whether you choose to buy a present or prefer to gift something you made at home, there are plenty of wonderful, pocket money friendly, thank you teacher gift ideas out there. Here are some presents we think any teacher would love to receive at the end of a long school year.

Creative End of Year Teacher Gifts

Tea & Tonic: Balm & Tea Bundle – £18.25

Almost too good to share, this Balm & Tea Bundle is something Flora and I curated from Tea & Tonic’s extensive range of luxurious, 100% natural, aromatherapy skincare and wellness wonder teas. It features their Inviting Sleep Halen Mon Bath Salts, Muscle Tonic Relief Balm, and 5 of their hand blended Adaptogen Superherb Complex Teas. Each of the teas – English Breakfast, Earl Grey, White Mint, Ginger Turmeric, and Golden Milk – are blended to revitalise, balance stress, and support a healthy immune system.

Hubble & Bubble: Aromatherapy Bath Cubes Set – £10.50

How pretty is this vegan, cruelty free Aromatherapy Bath Cubes set, complete with a cute little Teacher’s Apple silver charm? Inside the box you get a Revitalise citrus-fragranced orange cube, an Indulge rose-scented pink cube, a Deep Sleep lavender-fragranced white cube, and Congestion mint-scented pale yellow cube. The eco-friendly packaging comprises a fully recyclable shrink-wrapped bag inside a recyclable kraft box, finished with string.

Based in West Sussex, Hubble & Bubble have a wonderful range of SLS (sodium lauryl sulphate) free, vegan, cruelty free bath salts, bath bombs, soaps, and wax products that are also suitable for sensitive skin.

Peach Perfect: Heart Bird Feeder – £18.50

As a gardener who does her best for wildlife, I have fallen in love with this delicate ornamental metal hanging bird feeder from Peach Perfect, which looks great in our garden and would enliven any outside space. Its rusty metal style blends perfectly into the natural environment. Not just an unusual gift for teachers either, the heart shape and the two birds decoration make it a lovely novel present for a couple, perhaps as a wedding, anniversary, or housewarming gift.

Kate Findley set up Peach Perfect because she was fed up with not being able to find the “right” gifts for friends and family online or on the high street. All the gifts are personally selected by Kate and are beautiful, practical, affordable presents, even for that hard to please person who has everything. 

Gift & Graze: Luxurious S’Mores Kit – £16.00

Taking chocolate to the next level, this Luxurious S’Mores Kit from Gift & Graze features everything you need to create the ultimate squishy S’Mores in a beautifully wrapped box, with the option to add a handwritten gift message. Each kit contains the following: 1 non-toxic gel burner for marshmallow toasting, safety matches, 2 bamboo skewers, 9 chocolate topped biscuits, 12 pink & white marshmallows, 4 Lotus Biscoff, 1 large Milka chocolate bar, and full instructions & allergen information.

Set up at the height of the pandemic in 2020, Gift & Graze is a gift marketplace of small, independent businesses from all over the UK who sell unique and thoughtful gifts. The extensive range of high-quality, bespoke presents are suited to all occasions from birthdays to weddings. And the recently created the ‘shop by city’ initiative means you can now support local individual sellers within your city, and receive gifts at a fast rate too.

Useful End of Year Teacher Gifts

Always Personal: Bamboo & Steel Tea Flask with Removable Tea Strainer – £14.95

Many of us have reusable water bottles, but these stylish bamboo thermal flasks are something else. And they make a great gift for someone who likes to drink loose leaf tea while out and about as the flask is double walled with stainless steel inside. This is the perfect eco-friendly gift too as bamboo is a sustainable alternative to plastic. For a finishing touch you can add an engraved name to the side of the flask to make it unique.

Always Personal specialise in bringing your gift idea alive. Over the years they’ve personalised thousands of gifts bags, wall art, clothing, aprons, and keyrings. And with more than 5,000 gift ideas to choose from, finding the right present for Christmas, birthdays, weddings, and christenings, as well as end of year teacher gifts, is easy.

Stickerscape: Tote Bag – £9.50

Stickerscape’s Teach, Love, Inspire Tote Bag makes a wonderful and practical present for a teacher, either for Christmas or at the end of term. The tote bag is made from 100% cotton (140gsm), measures approximately 38cm x 42cm, with long handles for carrying on your shoulder, and total capacity is 10 litres. We chose dark blue with silver lettering, but the bag is available in a range of colour options – simply select the colour option to see a preview of your design.

Stickerscape was set up in 2011, making and selling high quality, design led wall stickers for children’s bedrooms, nurseries, and hospital wards. Over the years, their product range has grown to include window stickers, roller blinds, children’s name labels, and a selection of thoughtful gift ideas that are all made in-house at their Hampshire production site.

Handmade by Tinni: Zero Waste Cotton Keyrings – £8.00

Looking for a useful, zero-waste, biodegradable, gift for an eco-conscious teacher? These vibrant cotton keyrings from Handmade by Tinni are made from all the leftover ropes from her other 100% cotton designs. We chose two in blue and yellow as those are Flora’s school colours, but the keyrings are available in a whopping 28 colours. Made to order, they’re also lightweight, non-allergenic, and responsible towards environment.

Handmade by Tinni is run by Paulomi, a textile jewellery designer and maker who uses age old crafts like macrame and knot work to create sustainable statement jewellery from cotton rope. Cotton is sustainable, bio-degradable, soft to wear, and anti-allergenic. Her zero-waste collection ensures that every offcut is used and not thrown away. And by supporting Ecologi, an organisation dedicated to reforestation, Handmade By Tinni enables the planting of 12 trees per month. 

Write On It Today: To Do Pad/Planner – £6.95

Organisation is something that every teacher knows about. But some tasks just don’t fit into 7 days or Monday to Friday/Sunday, do they? Which is why I LOVE this 50-sheet A5 To Do Pad from Write On It Today that makes it easy to see daily or weekly tasks at a glance. I use it myself and it’s perfect for tracking tasks at work, home, family activities and more, with plenty of space to write down the most important top 3 items, a checklist below, and space for notes. Plus the paper is brilliant, there’s no bleed through, even from marker pens.

Write On It sell a range of bullet journals, personalised notebooks, notebooks and planners, which are handmade in small batches in their workshop in Dundee. Sara and Gillian are fanatical about stationery and their motto is, “Keep Putting Pen to Paper”. They’re all about a better work/fun balance using “analogue” planners to organise your time more efficiently and create more “me time” with stylish stationery that doesn’t break the bank.

Funny End of Year Teacher Gifts

London Mole: Spacey Blue Light Blocker Glasses – £15.00

Many teachers spend hours in front of whiteboards, laptops, iPads, and screens, all of which emit harmful artificial blue light. London Mole’s Blue Blocker Glasses are designed to help reduce this exposure and help prevent eye strain, fatigue, and headaches. Did you know artificial blue light can disrupt the body’s natural sleep and wake cycle? Not purely a fun gift then, these modern rectangular glasses (with safety case) mean your favourite teacher can look and feel good at work under all those LED and fluorescent lights. We picked transparent frames but you can choose from a wide range of coloured options.

British-based London Mole started out designing sunglasses with coloured lenses. Their boss is colour blind, and wanted to have glasses that ‘coloured in’ his universe. He was already designing and making cool watches and decided more fashion accessories such as sunglasses and reading glasses would be his thing. Making the polycarbonate-framed Blue Blockers with their hydrophobic coating, UV400, anti-glare acetate lens was the next logical step.

Trendhim: Spirit Level Cufflinks – £16.00

The last entry in our pocket money friendly end of year teacher gifts are these fabulous cufflinks from Trendhim. An original design featuring a spirit level mounted on a polished steel base for a unique bit of flair that your teacher won’t want to leave home without. Packed in a gift bag for that final touch, these are perfect for a Science or Design & Technology teacher – and they don’t have to be male teachers either, I’ve worn shirts with cufflinks in my time too 🙂

Trendhim designs quality men’s accessories that are fashionable and affordable. Because men’s accessories aren’t about gimmicks or dressing up for special occasions, nor are they reserved for a specific group of men. It’s about telling your story and expressing what makes you, you. One way to do that is through the smaller things you wear – accessories. They have currently have 13 brands in their portfolio, launching several collections a year to choose from.

Personalised End of Year Teacher Gifts

Most of the gifts featured above offer a personalised teacher option on checkout. Those that don’t, well, it’s easy enough to add a card or gift tag yourself, isn’t it? Just remember though, whichever teacher gift you choose, you need to allow a little time for despatch, especially if your gift is made to order or it’s being engraved. 

Last Minute End of Year Teacher Gifts

Life happens and sometimes things get in the way of best intentions. So, if you find you’ve left it too late, there’s always the gift card option. Your child might not know their teacher’s favourite store but a gift card from Etsy* or Amazon* is still a way of showing them some teacher appreciation on the last day of term.

The main thing is that your child has the opportunity to say thank you to their teacher, with whom they spend so much time, via a choice of creative, luxury, useful, and fun pocket money friendly end of year teacher gifts. Thank you to the companies who sent us the gifts featured in this guide, we love them all. Flora is going to have some very happy teachers at the end of this school year!

What do you think of these 10 end of year teacher gifts? Do you give your child’s teacher an end of the school year gift? If so, which one of these would you choose? And if you’re a teacher reading this post, thank you for all you do, and which gift would you love to receive?

* All items were sent to me to feature in this round up, with the exception of the Write On It Today notepad which I purchased myself. This post also contains affiliate links. Please see my Disclaimer for more details.