For my first post I am going to talk about the Decoration/Theme that I chose to decorate our Living Room/Spare Area to turn it into a classroom.
Our two bedroom two bath apt is only 1040 square feet. We have an open floor plan from the kitchen to the living room and a little bit of spare room towards the back by the back patio door.
Now I wish I could post the floor plan, but the internet wont let me. Anyways, if you look at the pictures, I have turned every extra bit of space, into a learning space. That’s easy to do. All you have to do is pick a theme. Every teacher, every year, picks a theme for their classroom. There are so many out there, the sky is the limit. You can buy the entire collection of the theme for a good price. Or you can even make every piece yourself.
The best place to find the collection is your local teacher supplies stores. Lakeshore is mine. Target has a collection of classroom decorations too, you can start there. The three biggest brands that make classroom decorations are; Trend Enterprises, Carson-Dellosa Edcuation, and Teacher Created Resources, which is the brand I am using.
The collection I picked is called Scribble. If you look at my pictures you will see the borders and the letters, and even the calendar on the wall is the collection. I picked it because I love color, and rainbow looking patters. It also looked like my preschoolers colored it themselves. Hence Scribble.
There are other pieces to the collection I haven’t gotten, but that’s the beauty. You don’t need the whole collection to make it beautiful. I chose to get other things in other collections in other brands. It’s whatever you want to make it. Be creative.
Target is where I got all those cool words and felt maps. Bullseyes Playground is the best dollar section ever. Not only during this time of year (July-August) do they have a lot of school supplies for less than 10 dollars, but they also have a ton of pretend play items for kids. I will post a target supplies blog soon. Look out for that.
Anyways, themes were always my favorite thing to plan for my classroom, back when I was an educator a while back before my kids were born. Honestly i thought i lost that technique when I became a stay at home mom, but i guess not. I found that part of myself again, and I know that you can get just as creative with your kiddos.
Good Luck!
The TAWL Mom 