Fun Touches for the School Room!

So in less than one short week we'll be starting up with our new homeschool year. We're all very excited! The school room is cleaned up and looking great, lesson plans have been put together, and we are ready!

This year for the school room bulletin board, we decided to have a wise old owl theme. I found a cute little roll of owl ribbon, and thought strips of that around the board would look lovely.

So cute!

I wanted an olive green background, but the two Crazy Kids were adamant we have brown. Since it's their room, too, who am I to argue! And, turns out, I think the brown looks much better than the olive would have! I just bought a yard of cloth from JoAnn Fabrics (our JoAnn's allows multiple coupons on one purchase, so, for us, it's the place to go!), cut it to fit the board and stapled it up there. Then I cut strips of ribbon to go over the border of the board because heaven knows I cannot cut fabric in a straight line! The ribbon hides the crookedness beautifully! I stapled them up, too, and voila! decorated bulletin board!

Hmmm, maybe I should have ironed the cloth. And would you look at that! Crooked ribbon. I'm hopeless with straight lines!

We also decided to start the year off with the Book Tree again. I did this with the kids last year, and apparently, it was a huge hit. I cut out an outline of a tree and used double sided "removable" tape to stick it to the school room door. I put the word "removable" in quotes because, later in the year, when I tried to remove it, it didn't remove. It took about an hour to scrape everything off the door! This year, I'm laminating the entire thing!

I know, it looks like something from another planet, but the tree actually looks fantastic once the leaves and apples get put on there!

Once school started, every time we read a book, we wrote the title and author's name on a leaf or apple and taped it to our tree.

These look wonderful on our tree!

The tree does tend to get overgrown after a bit, since we read so many books. Last year, once that started happening, I planned on taking it down and being done with it. But the Crazy Kids loved it so much, they asked me to continue with the idea. So for each season or holiday, we made another display for our book titles. It was lots of fun to see the displays grow, so we'll be doing it again this year!

Our Spring book display from last year. The Crazy Kids loved watching the flower bloom!

And finally, our school room would not be complete without our Hundred Day Jelly Bean Jars!

Yum!

I actually keep waiting for the Crazy Kids to be sick of this activity, but still, after three years, they look forward to it! Every day, we put in one jelly bean to mark the time. On our Hundredth Day, we put the last jelly bean in and have a little party. Of course they get to eat jelly beans, but not the ones that have gotten all sticky and stuck together in the jars...we do a craft of some sort with those. But it's a fun way for them to start their school day and seeing the jar every day reminds them of how much they've accomplished and the fun party they'll be having soon.

I love our little school room and, although I am not a terribly good decorator (not at all, actually), it is fun to do these little touches for the kids. It really gets them geared up for another fun homeschool year. What do you do to get your school room or space prepared? I'd love suggestions!!