10 DIY Classroom Themes You Can Create With Ease

August is quickly approaching and it’s time to start planning classroom themes. These ten whimsical classroom themes will add fun and excitement to your learning space. What child wouldn’t love to sit back and read a book while sitting by the ocean or in a cozy nook at Hogwarts? Students will look forward to working under their favorite truffula tree or practicing writing in the galley of a pirate ship. Whichever theme you choose, your classroom will be a colorful and exciting place for your little learners. If you’re looking for some creative ways to jazz up a your learning environment, we’ve got you covered. These themes help to engage your student and inspire creativity.

Classroom decorations are easy to DIY and make yourself so you can afford to transform your classroom on a budget with these ideas. The best and cheapest way to transform your Classroom is to pick a theme and work with it. Pick a theme that is popular for the season so supplies will be affordable. Ask parents to bring something in to add to the theme, for example, old party decorations that fit your theme, parents would only be too glad to get rid of their supplies. Remember if you don’t ask the parents for help there is zero chance of them contributing. Use your parents as a resource for free stuff.

Pick a theme that is easily interchangeable if you plan to purchase items. I love using chalkboards for my party supplies as it enables me to theme a room very quickly with text and sayings.

Remember 90% of the creativity and inspiration in your classroom comes from YOU the teacher! We also found some amazing classroom cuts out such as these

Life-Size Book Character Cutout

Palm tree cutout

Dr Seuss Decorations

Luau Classroom Theme – Schoolgirl Style

Superhero Classroom Theme – Schoolgirl Style

Ocean Classroom Theme – Pixie Chicks

Nautical Classroom Theme – Sailing Through 1st Grade

Harry Potter Classroom Theme – Chamber of Magic

Dr Seuss Classroom Theme – Tangled with Teaching

Buckaroo Classroom Theme – The Creative Classroom

Pirate Theme Classroom – Clutter-Free Classroom

Bee Classroom Decor – Flapjack Educational Resources

Jungle Classroom Theme – Trendy Teacher

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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