There are a lot of things to consider when you’re designing and decorating your classroom for a new school year, and a big consideration is how your classroom design will make you and your students feel. Some teachers like to go all out and fill their classroom with a colourful, vibrant design, while others prefer to do something more neutral to create a calm environment. But you don’t need to go fully one way or the other, there are lots of ways you can incorporate fun, bright, exciting classroom decorations throughout your classroom. The way you choose to use these colourful designs may impact how your students feel and behave, so think about what effect this may have. We have a few ideas for how you can create a fun and exciting classroom by using colourful display packs in specific ways!
Designs we suggest:
* Lover
Make permanent displays a fun feature
Lots of areas of your classroom décor will change throughout the year, whether that’s topic displays, noticeboards, or functional areas like continuous provision. But when you’re setting up your classroom ready for a new school year, there are some things which are likely to stay the same for the whole year, so we suggest making them fun, colourful, and vibrant! Things like a number line for EYFS for Key Stage 1 that you’ll keep up for reference all year, things you use for the aesthetic like bunting, or a calendar for your noticeboard that you change each day. All of these are included in our printable classroom display packs, so you can choose your favourite fun and colourful design and add it to your classroom.
Make quick, simple changes to keep things engaging
Changing up the design of certain areas of your classroom can help to keep children engaged with them. If there are areas that have important info, like golden rules, hand washing instructions, or a board that highlights good work from that week, they may get looked at often at the start of the year but over time may sort of blend into the background as students get used to them being there. One way to re-energise these important areas and keep refocusing children back towards them is to change up their visual design every so often.
Of course, when you’re pressed for time you may struggle to do this, so we suggest prepping at the start of the year. If you’ve chosen Candied Petals and you’ve worked out how many borders you’ll need to print for your board, choose another design or two as well and print the same amount of borders in the design at the same time. If you print, cut, and prep them all at once it’ll be faster than starting from scratch later, as you’re batching this job. Then during the school year, simply switch out one border for another that’s already prepped and ready to go, and you’ve quickly made an important area more exciting to look at.
Create an Affirmation Zone
An affirmation zone is a really fun way to bring positivity and wellbeing practice into your classroom. This can be a fairly small area of your room that you transform with affirmation posters (included in our display packs!) and keywords you can discuss the meaning of together (like brave or unique). You could incorporate a mirror, so children can look in the mirror and say the affirmation to themselves aloud.
An area like this is a great opportunity to do something colourful and vibrant, to encourage a feeling of excitement and positivity when children enter the space. Use the labels included in our display packs to highlight keywords, print the affirmation posters, use the borders to outline the area – there are a lot of ways you can incorporate a fun and colourful design into an affirmation zone in your classroom.
Label exciting resources to set behaviour expectations
There are certain activities you’ll do with your class that they’ll find especially exciting, so you could label these resources with colourful and exciting labels! Things like this can introduce the mood or expectation you’ll set when setting up a new activity. It can introduce a shift into a new activity and be a moment to remind children of how we behave when resources with this label come out.
For example, with art supplies: when we use resources with these labels, what do we need to remember? Sleeves rolled up, sharing paint pots, being aware of our elbows. Or Golden Time (or ‘free play’ times, often on a Friday afternoon) supplies like puzzles, games, and colouring pages. This afternoon, you’ll be allowed to use the resources that have this label on – this can encourage independence in children while still being clear about a boundary, as things with that label should only be accessed during a specific time. Choose a specific label that shows how fun and exciting the resources are, and will act as a signifier of certain expectations we have with these resources.
These are just a few ideas for how you can create a fun and exciting classroom! Find our display packs here to choose your favourite design for your classroom.
