Friday, July 13, 2012

Classroom theme....Sigh....

I know so many people who think of classroom themes. The funny thing is though I have tried I have never been a big theme person (which I think is really weird because I looooovvee everyone else's themes in my school and wish I would have thought of them). I have loosely jungle themed my class a number of times. I love filling the spaces with animals and monkeys are my favorites. I even went completely overboard two years ago and expanded my jungle theme including elements of Horton Hears a Who. One of my more artistic parents made me huge versions of my own laboriously sketched Dr. Seuss characters to put up. I sketched out a scene from the movie and made it close to life size to cover these huge windows in my classroom. I also made jungle vines out of green felt and brown pipe cleaners. It was amazing!! (I kept it up for about a week and then took most of it down). The kids were so upset I had to think of something else for them to put up almsot immediately. Below are some pictures of my classroom from that Horton Hears a Who theme week.


My little monkeys chasing Horton and the speck. (Sorry but all these pics came from my Blackberry and are very fuzzy, I had left my camera at home that day :( I was so sad about that.)

The story characters and the beginning of the mural byt he windows.

Our favorite line from the story and my own version of Seuss's trees as illustrated in the book.

My jungle vines and our sign for the Jungle of Nool over my teacher led center table.

My kiddos writing on lesson from Horton they learned and their pieces of Whoville put together.

One of my kiddos modeling her Horton gear before heading home.
Sigh. Last year I barely had time to set up a classroom let alone think of a theme so I went for primary colors and added my monkeys and some vines. I didn't even take pictures when the room was finished because I ended up losing my camera at the beginning of the year.

I am thinking to go for a primary color scheme and then adding my monkeys but I am not quite sure it's what I want and the more I think about it the less I am sure that I want to do it. I would miss my monkeys if I didn't put them up (and one of the other teachers at my school might ask me to borrow them and I would forget and never get them back).

Any one have any suggestions? I could really use some guidance from any of you experts in classroom themes. :)

4 comments:

  1. Last year I said my room was an outdoor theme, but you wouldn't have known it by walking in. :) I only had a few things up that made it that way. This year, in my head, I am going with a space theme. When everything is up...we'll see what it looks like.

    If you went with a jungle theme, could you build a tree and hang some monkeys from it? I saved all sorts of pictures of trees last year, until I found out we couldn't make trees in our classrooms. :( I actually got one of the carpet stores to donate three big carpet tubes as bases. You could give all the kids bananas on the first day of school... ha ha.

    BTW...I love the Shelfari widget you have. I'm being a total copycat and adding one to my page. :)

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    1. Feel free to copy whatever you like. The idea of a tree is a good one. I have plenty of monkeys to hang from it. Thanks for the idea! I think our counselor had someone create a tree in her room, maybe I will ask her to let me know who and how it was created.
      Your space theme sounds very cool! Can't wait to see what it looks like when it's realized.

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  2. I was going to suggest a tree too! You can put it in a corner or in your reading area for the kids to sit under! If you can always put a vine outlining your door and hang the monkeys there. I had the Jungle theme in my room a couple of years ago but moved to a blue/green theme with a few hints of the ocean. I found going with the color and adding a little bit of a theme goes a long way! Check out my blog, there is a one post on the jungle theme, it may have a few ideas that you could always add to your room. Hope it helps! I just started following you today! Can't wait to read more!
    -Brigid
    http://brigidsdailylessonlog.blogspot.com/

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    1. Thanks for the ideas! Definitely following you!!

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- Vicky

http://themadnessthatiskindergarten.blogspot.com