Every June, daycare teachers receive the same collection of gifts. A plant. A mug with a handprint. Maybe a voucher for something they’ll never use. A box of chocolates. Another plant.
After ten years with small children, you accumulate a lot of plants.
I thought about this when my older son left his Kita last summer. His caregivers had known him since he was two. They’d watched him go from a kid who drew circles and called them everything, to one who spent forty-five minutes on a single drawing of our apartment building: every window carefully outlined, the bicycle rack in front, our cat visible in one of the upper floors.
I wanted to give them something that reflected that. Not a plant.
What they actually keep
Ask any daycare teacher which gifts from former kids are still at her home. She’ll think for a moment, then name one or two things. A photo. A drawing. Something handmade by a specific child she still recognizes years later.
She will not mention the plants.
The gifts that last are specific. They’re tied to the actual child: to his particular way of drawing dogs that look like horses, to the phase when everything he made was green, to the handwriting that was completely illegible until around February and then, suddenly, had a logic to it.
Generic gifts say: thank you. Specific gifts say: we noticed.
The relationship that doesn’t fit on a card
Daycare is not school. The relationship between a small child and their caregiver is unlike most relationships in that child’s life: more hours together than many family members, closer than a teacher, more structured than a babysitter.
By the time my son left, his main caregiver knew things about him I had to ask her about. She knew which activities made him anxious and which ones he asked for first thing in the morning. She knew the exact face he made right before he cried.
You cannot buy a gift that captures that. But you can give one that acknowledges it.
Two years on 28 pages
My son had been drawing almost every week at Kita. Some drawings came home. Some stayed there. I had a stack of about 25 drawings from two years: the ones I’d photographed before they got crumpled, plus a handful of originals.
I put them into a book. It took about an hour: selecting the drawings, arranging them in rough chronological order, writing a short dedication on the inside cover. I used Scribbly for it, the app I built. The background removal meant the drawings appeared clean on white pages instead of with our kitchen table in every photo. (Full disclosure: I’m the founder.)
We gave the book to his caregiver on his last day. She opened it in front of us. She went quiet. Then she said she’d never received anything like it.
I’m not telling you this to sell a book. I’m telling you because I’d spent years not knowing what to do with a pile of drawings, and it turned out one of them was the answer to a gift problem I’d had every single year.
Which drawings to pick
Not the “best” ones. Not the most finished or the most ambitious.
Pick the ones that show the progression. The October drawing where people have circular bodies and three fingers. The February one where suddenly there’s a neck. The May drawing with actual perspective, sort of.
That’s the story. The caregiver lived it alongside your child. A book that shows the arc, not just the highlight reel, is the gift that makes sense.
If you can include one drawing made at Kita and one made at home: even better. It shows the whole child, not just the Monday-morning version.
You don’t need an archive
If you haven’t been photographing the artwork regularly, here’s a quick method that takes about 30 seconds per drawing.
Ten drawings make a good book. Five make a thin but meaningful one. Even three strong pieces, laid out with space around them, are more personal than anything you can buy.
The point isn’t volume. It’s that the drawings come from this child, for this person, at this specific goodbye.
That specificity is what makes it irreplaceable.
Six weeks from now
Kita year-end in Switzerland and Germany is late June. The artwork from this whole year is somewhere in your house right now: on the fridge, in a folder from the last pick-up bag, in a drawer.
You have about six weeks.
For a book delivered in time, two to three weeks of lead time is realistic. Which means starting to photograph and select in the next few weeks, not the last Sunday of June.
The summer brain sets in fast. Now is when it’s easy.
FAQ
What if I don’t know which drawings came from Kita?
It doesn’t matter much. A book from this year’s drawings, wherever they were made, shows who your child was at this age. The context is less important than the specificity.
How many pages does a book need to be?
The minimum is 30 pages. 30 pages works well for 10 to 15 drawings with some space around each. It doesn’t need to be thick to feel substantial.
Should I include a written message?
Yes. Even a short one. Write something true and specific: what you’ll always remember about this person with your child. Three sentences is enough. This is usually what the caregiver reads first and keeps longest.
My child is only leaving daycare, not moving on. Is this still appropriate?
Absolutely. Kita transitions happen for all kinds of reasons. The gift isn’t about the finality. It’s about the time that was shared.
