ideas on decorating my pre-school room??and where to get supplies?

The Dollar Tree store in our town sells wonderful teacher supplies, and all for a Dollar each. Check on-line for a store near you.

Garage sales.

Network amongst teachers. Contact teachers who have retired, they might be delighted to donate their stash of supplies, or loan them out anyway.

The best decoration for a preschool classroom is the children’s own artwork. You want a minimum of commercial materials. Take a nice big wall space and turn it into an art gallery with a space labeled with each child’s name. You can flatten cardboard boxes, attach the cardboard to the wall, and cover it with construction paper for inexpensive bulletin boards, Let the kids draw or paint on strips of paper to make borders.

Stay away from TV or cartoon characters. There are some great posters with pictures of real children participating in real activities available from naeyc.org . Ask your public library or local bookstore if they have gently used posters about kids. books.

Use real objects to label the areas. Glue a block to a sign that says “Block Area”. a wooden spoon to the Housekeeping Area sign and so on.

In general, avoid overdecorating and visual clutter. Use decor as part of the labeling system to help the kids find materials, not to amuse the kids. They will learn more and feel more ownership of the room if most of what they see is their own work.

The best place for good prices on paint etc. is discountschoolsupply.com They have great weekly e-mail specials and good prices generally. Their paint is great but stick to crayola for crayons. The local dollar store is my other favorite place to shop.

I just saw a ton of teacher supplies at the Dollar Store.

Oriental Trading also has things for less.

Wal-mart also often has a large teacher supply section.

E-bay also has a ton of stuff up for sale.

I’ll have to admit – I got a job working at a teacher supply store in order to get a discount on supplies.

Good Luck

Any dollar store will have great supplies but you can also check on craigslist.com or freecycle.com to see if there are teachers getting rid of any items that might be useful. On frecycle and craiglist you can list a wanted add. You can always find free things.

Oriental Trading company has cheap things but their quality a lof of times is poor.

These are great ideas. You really want to emphasize the kids’ work. Hang up their art work, their writing samples, and projects that the class works on together.

One thing I like to do is make “picture frames” (use colorful poster board or craft foam) to hang on the wall, one for each child, with their name painted (puffy fabric paints work very well) at the bottom or top center on their frame. I hang these on the wall with the top edge unattached to the wall so that I can slip in a new picture from each child once a week. I call it our art gallery. The kids love to see a special picture they made displayed in this decorative way! Then I hang other items from the ceiling and on the walls in other areas where they apply. Drawing “blueprints” this week? Hang them in the block area. Making butterflies? Hang in the science area. etc. You get the idea!

Everything should be on “their level”, lots of books and they walls should be full of their art work. There should be different stations, a reading station, imaginary play etc. Wal-mart, Michael’s’ and Oriental Trading would be a good place for supplies.

The best decorations are the ones the kids make themselves. Leave wall space for posting their work…their paper plate face, caterpillars, etc. Surely you’ve found a teacher store to shop in…they have loads of stuff. Make several posters for kids to place stickers on for different reasons (i can tie my shoe, etc).

One of the neatest signs i saw was made with colored tootsie rolls. the teacher put them in the microwave a few seconds then pulled them into the shape of letters of the alphabet..very colorful and cool! good luck!

Are you saying you can paint your lockers? I am pretty sure that isn’t allowed. Go to Office Depot, they have cool stuff! Girls your age also like Claire’s, and I know they have a lot of decorating stuff there.

i am an interior decorator…iguess first of all you should start with the painting on the walls…the paintings can be of the characters in the poetry for example you can draw humpty-dumpty…as children loves soft toys a lot just hang a net on the roof n hang some toys on it..hangit a bit higher so that the children dont spoil them…then you can start with the play section where you can keep various games…like putting the shapes on the correct place etc..this will help them to increse their education n will be fun too…then you can start with the benches on which they will sit..try to keep the benches in bright colours as childrean love bright colours..as these children dont have much of stuyding try to keep much games in the room if there is enogh place for it..you can even keep big cubes for sitting as you will find it cheap..

Big lots has allot of great things for your room and staples. You can also put in a request at Wal-Mart for donations. The school where you are working at should also have a reimbursement program.