The World's Best Classroom Birthday Treat

As many of you know, I taught elementary school for 11 years before becoming a stay-at-home mom.  In the course of those 11 years, I experienced a wide variety of birthday treats.  Let me tell you about one of the most memorable.

It was my first year teaching.  I was 23 years old.  I had a combination class, 32 students in 4th and 5th grade.  We were in the middle of a science lesson, about an hour before the end of the school day, when the door opened and a mom popped in.  Unannounced.  Unexpected.  "Surprise!" she yelled.  "I brought root beer floats for ****'s birthday!"  She was juggling several tubs of ice cream, a package of cups, and 2 liter bottles of root beer.  She set them down on my counter, then turned to me and said, "I need a spoon."

I was completely flabbergasted.  Not only was she interrupting, but she was asking ME to provide supplies?  What I should have done was asked her to come back at the end of the day, so as not to interrupt our lesson.  Instead, totally unsure of the rules or norms of the school in regards to birthday celebrations, I got her a spoon.  It took forever for her to scoop out 32 floats and we ended up having to finish the science the following day.  She left my counter sticky and my spoon dirty.  With 32 students and 180 teaching days, I could potentially expect an interruption like this every 5 days or so.  Completely and totally unacceptable.  I immediately established a birthday policy that worked for me and enforced it rigidly over the years.

Fast forward to this year.  Trevor's teacher sent home a letter about birthday celebrations- you're welcome to bring a treat with advanced notice, but it must have nutritional value and be nut-free.  I added my own rules to the list: it must not inconvenience the teacher and it must not be messy.  The perfect birthday treat?  S'mores Trail Mix!

The ingredient list is simple: Golden Grahams cereal, chocolate chips, and mini marshmallows.  (If I were making it for home, I would have replaced the chocolate chips with chocolate covered nuts, but the school treat had to be nut-free.)

Trevor carefully scooped the mix into individual bags.  That way it would be very quick and easy to hand out to the children.  Each bag was closed with a twist tie (rather than tied with a ribbon) so that the children could open their own without needing the teacher's help.  

 

Here are the finished bags.

The kids could either snack on it as is, or make mini s'mores using two Golden Grahams, one chocolate chip and one marshmallow.  Delicious! 

The S'mores Trail Mix was a hit.  And most importantly, I know that years from now Trevor's teacher won't be complaining about me and the birthday treat I sent!