Our school is undergoing many changes this year. Nearly every teacher in the school is moving to a new location, so that we may better serve our students in classrooms organized by grade-level and subject. I was so happy to see the newly-printed signs with our school logo and the teacher's name labeling every classroom. I stopped by my old classroom to clean out some materials today, and then I decided to venture to my new room to kindle the fire of ideas for decorating and designing my seventh grade classroom.
The custodians have been working hard to clean the school and every classroom, every nook and cranny really! Most of my furniture is in the middle of the room, so that vacuums can find their way into the often untouched crevices where dust and dirt linger. I have a lot of classroom planning to do, but I am so thankful to have a large space and desks with seats that detach!!!
The most difficult thing to work with in my new room is the lack of windows. Well, we do have one window, but it opens to a cabinet in the hallway! I don't think staring into a cabinet is very inspiring, and I fear some students might look for inspiration by climbing through the window and into the cabinet. We can't have school visitors thinking that this school is a zoo with children on display! Right now the oddly placed window is covered with orange paper. I hope to find a nice poster of an outdoor scene to cover the window. Then, I want to surround that picture by two lamps to give the appearance of light. Any opportunity for light that isn't fluorescent is definitely something I want to take advantage of this year! The light in the outdoor scene will hopefully create the feeling of looking outside!
The custodians have been working hard to clean the school and every classroom, every nook and cranny really! Most of my furniture is in the middle of the room, so that vacuums can find their way into the often untouched crevices where dust and dirt linger. I have a lot of classroom planning to do, but I am so thankful to have a large space and desks with seats that detach!!!
The most difficult thing to work with in my new room is the lack of windows. Well, we do have one window, but it opens to a cabinet in the hallway! I don't think staring into a cabinet is very inspiring, and I fear some students might look for inspiration by climbing through the window and into the cabinet. We can't have school visitors thinking that this school is a zoo with children on display! Right now the oddly placed window is covered with orange paper. I hope to find a nice poster of an outdoor scene to cover the window. Then, I want to surround that picture by two lamps to give the appearance of light. Any opportunity for light that isn't fluorescent is definitely something I want to take advantage of this year! The light in the outdoor scene will hopefully create the feeling of looking outside!
I am not sure whose decision it was when this building was built many long years ago, but the orange and tan color scheme is certainly not very appealing! I want to bring some brighter colors into the classroom to inspire creativity instead of nap time. The colors aqua, lime green, and blue are standing out to me as a great color scheme for my classroom. I have three ideas for bringing these colors into my ew-ew orange classroom on a budget:
- The first idea is to use colorful contact paper to cover the bland tan cabinets, shelves, and tote trays. I already found a gorgeous paisley design in bright green and blue! I need to find a few more rolls of brightly colored contact paper.
- The second idea I have is to purchase inexpensive but colorful table cloths to brighten up my computer work station table.
- Finally, I plan to cover the area around my desk and my bulletin boards with colorful fabrics. I need to make a trip to JoAnn's! Fabric is much cheaper and durable than large sheets of paper, which is great since I have FIVE bulletin boards this year! I'm sure I will be able to reuse the same fabrics next year too!
And finally... my last big idea for my new classroom... a comfortable reading corner! I hope I have time to make this happen this year. I had the idea last year and was never able to execute it. I was also limited by the overwhelming amount of furniture in my old room. This year I see a beautiful space opening up for the reading corner in the front of the room. I hope to get a colorful rug to cover the floor area and fabric or tapestry to cover the wall. Then, of course, I need comfy seating. I may have to start with seat cushions, or maybe I could find a nice bean bag chair. This would also be a good area to put a bookshelf and begin building my classroom library.
Ah, so many ideas and so little time. These are the before pictures. I can't wait to update next month with pictures of the transformation. Can you believe school starts in a little over three weeks?!?!?
Ah, so many ideas and so little time. These are the before pictures. I can't wait to update next month with pictures of the transformation. Can you believe school starts in a little over three weeks?!?!?