Fall Party Gift Ideas

Purchase little plastic pumpkins, which are so popular as trick or treat bags this time of year. Fill it with all things "fall" - caramel apple cider packets with a cinnamon stick, little themed notebooks, pencils, erasers, pumpkin candy, and candy corn packets. Lisa Kothari is the founder and president of Peppers and Pollywogs, a kids' party planning company that provides parents with ideas, entertainers, and interesting web-based tools (customized rhymes and cards for your invitations!) to make kids' party planning easy.

Keep it simple and fresh by cutting a few stems of flowers from the garden and placing them in a mason jar. Bring your child into the garden with you and let him or her pick out the flowers. There's no right or wrong here - any flowers cut from a garden will look good together. I love this natural look! It reminds me of my grammar school days, when kids would bring flowers to the teacher. A few stems of garden roses wrapped with a little aluminum foil seemed to have magical powers for both the giver and the receiver!

Can a teacher ever have too many #2's? This adorable vase is just a clear beverage glass covered with unsharpened #2 pencils. Place a rubber band around the glass and insert the pencils between the glass and the rubber band until the entire glass is covered. Hide the rubber band with a fun school themed or colorful ribbon. Add about 2 inches of water into the glass (easier for transporting), but make sure the teacher knows they should add more water as soon as possible to keep the flowers fresher longer. Sunflowers are perfect long lasting flowers, but you can use any flowers. Flowers picked from your garden are great too!

Send the kids home with a facemask, test tubes, green slime, goggles, magnifying glasses, magnets, etc.  Alternatively, send them home with test tubes filled with candy like M&Ms.Lisa Kothari is the founder and president of Peppers and Pollywogs, a kids' party planning company that provides parents with ideas, entertainers, and interesting web-based tools (customized rhymes and cards for your invitations!) to make kids' party planning easy.

Find out each child's name before the party, and decorate a brown paper bag using their initials. You can do this with markers and/or stickers. Inside the bag include alphabet stickers, iron-on patches with their initials, alphabet coloring books with a small box of crayons, magnetic letters, a wooden block with their initials, etc.Lisa Kothari is the founder and president of Peppers and Pollywogs, a kids' party planning company that provides parents with ideas, entertainers, and interesting web-based tools (customized rhymes and cards for your invitations!) to make kids' party planning easy.

Favors for this party can include: flashlightstie-dyed T-shirtslittle knapsacks filled with camping stuff (bug spray, glow-in-the-dark stickers, water guns, glow bracelets, little plastic animals that you would find in the woods, etc.)The ideas are endless!Lisa Kothari is the founder and president of Peppers and Pollywogs, a kids' party planning company that provides parents with ideas, entertainers, and interesting web-based tools (customized rhymes and cards for your invitations!) to make kids' party planning easy.