A Fun Holiday Gift Guide for Dance Teachers (and Assistants, Too)!

It’s the gifting season, and there are not many shopping days left either! Lately, we’ve been approached by lots of you asking us what we give as gifts to our teachers at the holidays, so we created a gift guide based on past gifts we’ve given to our staff that went over well!

If you know us, you know we love a theme! Last year, we based our staff holiday gift around the theme of our year-end show, which was the ABCs of RDC. In addition to treating everyone to a yummy dinner at a charming Italian restaurant, we gave everyone a velvet clutch/pouch from Anthropologie with their initial on it, similar to this or this. (Get it, ABCs?!) You don’t need a theme for this to work for you…monograms are always on trend. You could get them something different with their initial on it, Anthro has a whole monogram shop with lots of items in varying price ranges, as do many other cute stores pretty much everywhere!

We are big fans of pouches as there are so many things you can use them for…storing pens/pencils in your computer bag, jewelry for travel, or even using as a clutch, just to name a few. In 2017, we gifted our staff these fun pouches from Sugarboo & Co. and selected a few different quotes that were fitting for our team (there are 22 different quotes to choose from!). Inside the pouch, we included a custom notebook from May Designs, a mini bottle of Prosecco with a WOW Card affixed to it and a cute paper straw!

Another gift we love to give is fun bangle bracelets~especially if you can find ones that have sayings that your team can relate to! Several years ago, we found some that said “Crazy Town” on them, and we simply had to have them stat as it clearly describes our precise situation At. All. Times! So, we bought one for each of our staff who helped out at the Holiday show that year. That kicked off a bracelet tradition that led to other fun bracelets such as “That’s Bananas!”, astrological signs, rainbows and a few others. We ALWAYS have our eye out for a great bangle, especially if it has a fun phrase on it! We haven’t found one we love yet for this year, so let us know if you see one!

Personalized water bottles or tumblers are always great for dance teachers and assistants! May Designs has customizable tumblers in multiple sizes and really cute patterns, or you can go a simpler route like S’well or other brands if you aren’t into the colorful patterns. You can also go to Custom Ink and design a water bottle using your studio’s logo and gift that to your teachers and assistants!

And, while you’re at it, Custom Ink is a great place to create logo wear of all kinds – t-shirts, hoodies, bags and more! This year, we created some fun pouches (did we mention that we love pouches? ha!) through Custom Ink in the theme of our year-end show (which is Willy Wonka!). We are selling them in our dance wear boutique, pre-wrapped with a few fun buttons added on, and 5 of them have golden tickets hidden inside that include a fun experience for the lucky winners!! Custom Ink has amazing customer service, and we’ve worked with them a lot!

Of course, we would be remiss if we didn’t point out that our Confetti Shop has some fun gift ideas like spark*source, fun apparel and key chains, and lots of fun teaching tools that you can “gift” your studio!

And, if you’re looking for smaller gift items, some fun ideas of things you can usually find under $10 are key chains with tassels, pom poms or initials (or combo of all three!), Target gift cards (even at $10, who doesn’t LOVE Target?!), cute luggage/bag tags or scented candles!

Once you have your gift(s) in hand, don’t forget about the wrapping! Sometimes the added touches on the outside makes what’s on the inside even better! Our biggest hit two years ago was attaching a WOW Card to each teacher’s gift…we think they loved it as much as or maybe even more than the actual gift! And, we’re OK with that!

We hope this gifting guide gives you inspiration to find just the right FUN gift for the dance teacher (or dance teacher assistant) in your life! Happy shopping and Happy Holidays!