Alright ladies, since next week is my wedding weekend then it is off to our honeymoon I am going to try to do a few post before I leave!
I have been getting LOTS of emails about setting up my classroom. As you guys know I am still keeping faith that the right position will be coming my way. However, in the mean time I can live through you all and be jealous that y'all are decorating your classrooms! Ahh
Let me start by saying I am no expert. However, I am my father's child (who works in the furniture business) and he has an amazing talent for decorating. So putting together my room is just something that was fun for me :)
I tried to come up with a quick list of some helpful tips when you start off:
1. Choose 2- 3 colors: Whether you choose a theme (I did a Rock star theme) or not, it is important to be consistent with your color scheme. Last year I chose hot pink, lime green, and turquoise. Then I added zebra (black/white) to jazz it up. My inspiration came from one of my borders. I tried to incorporate the colors from the print on the border into my room!
2. Keep your walls the same colors! If you choose to do each wall in a different print or color it will look mismatched and not cohesive. So, for example if you are doing your room all blue and yellows, then stick to doing all of your walls the same. Or in my case I did the same lime green on four walls, two turquoise, and 2 hot pink. Also, the entire front wall of my room was an electric purple. This is not what I had planned when I first started but it turned out to match with my theme and style.
3. Patterns on the wall are HARD to decorate with. Try to keep it simple by keeping the patterns to the borders, and the solids for the wall space.
(This is an example of one of my first classrooms where I used a polka dot crazy pattern background? Am I right! Too much!)
4. BORDER- This was my biggest learning experince… keep it all the same. Buy a few that match your theme and colors and just use those all over the room. AND, double up! Layer borders on top of each other, it gives a more dramatic effect.
(Above is my box of border I bought last year, I stuck to four different prints that I used on every wall)
( Here is an example of my classroom lasted year with doubled border of green polka dots and zebra)
5. Now that you have chosen your color scheme and border, the first thing I suggest is sitting down and mapping out your room. I used post-it notes and a large piece of paper so I could envision what it would look like. Move the post-its around on the paper until you find what works for your room. This will save you the time of pushing furniture or taking down paper/ border that did not work.
6. Once you map it out and put up your borders and paper… now it's on to the finishing touches and arranging the furniture. I always tried to make sure my room "flowed" and had an inviting feeling to the class. If you have too much furniture in your classroom, KICK IT OUT! The janitors may not love you for it, but you won't regret it! Sometimes us teachers like to hold on to our furniture because we had to fight to get it! Ha. But if it's not working, then let it go and have a home in someone else's classroom who may actually have a use for it. Plus, what comes around goes around, furniture will come and go!
But, most of all remember to get yourself a good glue gun… it seems to solve all my problems when decorating a classroom! :)
Best of luck decorating!
Please send me your pictures, I would love to feature you lovely teachers on my blog for your adorable rooms!
