Camping Classroom Theme

My husband had to move classrooms again this year (2017) so I took it as an opportunity to re-decorate his classroom and post about it. He is sharing his classroom as he is a special education teacher but I was still able to decorate a lot. We figured a decorated classroom will help calm the students more than plain walls with lots of white space would.

He decided on a camping theme so I searched through Pinterest for some ideas. I showed my husband, took his favorite ones and combined them with my own ideas and here is the final product - a mini forest with trees, animals, a tent, a fire and stars. Cute right?!?

Here is a close up of the bulletin board. It says, "Reading under the STARS!" with a fire on it.

We cut out several yellow stars and hung them from the ceiling with fishing line. Add a comfy chair or bean bag and it makes for a relaxing calming corner or reading nook. You can also buy or make a kid size tent and add it to the reading area for a more private reading area. We stuck with a paper tent since my husband is a special education teacher, we figured it would be safer for the students.

My husband didn't want his clock decorated this year, mainly due to it's location so we kept it simply by having an owl perch on top of it. If you like decorating your clock, you could turn it into a sun with the times written on the sun points, a moon to match the night time camping theme or even a compass. If you want to keep it more simple you could use the clock as the belly of an animal such as a bear, owl or moose.

The poster is a cute saying I found on Pinterest; it isn't linked to a direct blog to give credit for the saying but I found it HERE. I thought it was a great set of rules for a classroom so I typed it up with a cute border.

I made this poster with the saying "be a THINKER not a STINKER" to go with my husbands classroom theme.

My husband's school is a Leader and Me School so I also typed up the 7 Habits to Happy Kids for him to hang up.

There is a long bulletin board in the back of the room that we decorated to look like a pond to match the camping theme. The bulletin board says "Caught doing good work!". This is a place for my husband to display some of his students good work. We decorated the bulletin board with blue paper, a bubble boarder, fish and a fishing net. You can also add clothes pins and hang work from the fishing net if you would like. So basically the students are camping under the stars next to a pond. I personally think both bulletin boards turned out pretty cute!

Here is a close up of the bulletin board with more fish hanging in the net. The shark was used for a school skit and added for fun!

My husband used the sayings "Reading under the Stars" and "Caught doing good work" for his bulletin boards but there are several other cute and creative camping or fishing related saying you can use to decorate your door or the bulletin boards in your classroom. Here are a few other possibilities you can use:

• "Welcome to our Neck of the Woods"
• "Welcome to Camp ______"
• "Camping out in ___ Grade"
• "Fired up for ___ Grade"
• "Reading makes you a Happy Camper"
• "Camped out with a Good Book"
• "The Adventure begins here"
• "Time for S'more learning"
• "The S'more you read, the S'more you know"
• "S'more Good Work" 
• "Oh the Places you will Go" - Dr. Suess
• "Our Map to Learning"
• "Were Hooked on  ___ Grade"
• "Hooked on a good Book"
• "Camp Rules" 
• "Camp Chores"
• "Camp Schedule"
• "Catching Compliments"
• "Caught being Good"
• "Rest Area" - Calming Corner

If you look closely you can also see that we numbered the computers with the woodland animals. Numbering the computers comes in handy because you can tell the student to go to the computer number of your choice to help avoid conflicts.

A small added touch to the classroom are the pencil, marker, crayon holders that my husband made out of formula cans and thick twine. There is a pencil holder for each table and his desk. The rustic look goes perfect with the camping theme. These pencil holders are an easy way to help spice up your classroom. You can find out how he made them HERE!

There are tons of different ways you can incorporate a camping theme into your classroom, these are just a few. Keep in mind that you don't have to decorate your classroom or go all out either. You also don't have to spend a lot of money to decorate as you can make your own decorations like we did. You would be surprised what you can do with a little paper, glue and scissors. Eventually we may add a "Be a Thinker, Not a Stinker" poster with a skunk on it and some handmade bugs. I will update this post if/when we do. I hope you enjoyed the camping decorations for my husband's classroom and that they helped you come up with an idea for your classroom.  

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Here are links to some of the images used to decorate. It has been a while since I found everything used so these may be different links or the image terms may of changed.  You can search for free woodland animal clipart or find someone who sells cute animals on Etsy or Teachers Pay Teachers. I noticed I had better luck finding the animals when I searched for a specific animal. 

The animals I used are HERE along with the Fox and the fish are HERE. The boarder I used for the posters is a free stock photo from Pexels.com. I also saw some cute free downloads that were related to the camping theme on Teachers Pay Teachers so you can always check there too. All the images used were either created by me or for our personal use and they all were free at the time of use.  

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