As I'm idling away the summer, I'm wondering what I can do to make my classroom more "homey" next year. I did a little better this year with being harsh with myself and tossing stuff I hadn't unpacked or use for a year. But then all the dreaded engineering boxes took up a bunch of room, and they never quite made it out of the cardboard boxes. My excuse was that I didn't want to buy an organization system on the fly without trying the year out and seeing what would make sense. That or I'm a lazy procrastinator. I'm picking the former.
Some of my ideas so far (don't know if they'll pan out) are:
* the teeny white Christmasy type lights strung around somehow.
* painting the ceiling tiles somehow.
* bringing in a metal porch swing (LOVE them and have 2 at home, one on the porch and one in my office)
* extra "calm" decorative lighting as opposed to the overhead stuff.
* painting the cinder block walls (I'm thinking I'm not motivated to make that happen, though)
* less tables (we don't have desks) and more students around the tables. This year I had 10 large tables in class, and there was hardly room to move around. I've also heard that I'll be most likely having a class of 30 or so, so I'd need at least 8 tables anyway if I had 4 2 a table. Ugh.
* I'd like a wall or board dedicated to articles I've found in my magazines or on the web. Stuff about cool jobs kids may not have heard about or things about inventors or students making a difference or inspiring stories.
* I loved having the mobiles from the last summer project hanging up all year, but those are coming down. Maybe I can have the students in class make other types of mobiles that are topic related.
* This craft gave me some ideas. Maybe I can make a BIG jigsaw puzzle template with 30 pieces (or more, one for each class .... eeeek), and then the students decorate the piece to reflect their personality, and then we hang the finished product all together. But if I have 120 students .... have to think about this one.
* I have a big wall of windows in my room, and we're on the 1st floor. I'm thinking of the students making things that would face out and the passers-by would have art work or math work to gaze at.
Okay, must think some more about this ...
At our hs we have two whole-wall murals with math themes that turned out pretty cool and colorful.The math honor society kids did them. Art students have painted the ceiling tiles too.
ReplyDeleteoooh, I didn't think about a mural OR about getting students to paint. I have some pretty creative ones. I wonder if they'd help. Thanks for the suggestions.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of kids doing the painting. We have murals, really pretty, around our school that were all done by students as class projects. We paid one former student a few summers ago to come back to do the junior high hallway.
ReplyDeleteYou would have room for a swing? How fun that would be. I'd love to have a hammock. :)
We have so much dust where we are (lemon orchard and a highway)that any 3D objects like mobiles and lights would just be dust magnets.
Sorry, my comment is useless. I guess I just want to drop in to say "Hello Shireen! Hope you're having a great summer."
Hi Fawn. I'm completely enjoying summer. Love the amount of sleep I get, and the time to stare off into space. AND I'm at the beach right now. Lovely. Hope you're finding tons of time for r&r :)
ReplyDeleteFinally caught up with your blog since my last visit in May. LOVE it by the way!! One of my goals this summer was to start my own little blog and you might be interested in my first post! I laughed out loud when I read your post about the giant puzzle.
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