Rookie Room Decor

Find out what ethnic groups are represented in your student population, and buy magazines that emphasize those groups. Kids need to see themselves in order to imagine doing various activities. Also, if you have pictures of their societal sub-group up, they won't be as likely to have that underlying question of whether or not you like them.

If you have a camera you can use inexpensively, make some pictures of classes through the year, and post them. The kids love it, and adults are very taken with such displays.

What I do for bulletin boards is to provide a basic theme and have the kids fill in the blanks. Last year it was "Carrboro Kids Make All Kinds of Music!" Each class had to sign a sheet to list what kind of music they make - LOTS of "singing," as well as private music lessons (i.e., piano, guitar, drums, etc.). It gave the kids the recognition they love. All students' signatures were up there, and I would see them gazing at it from time to time. Some of the older kids made drawings to include also. I filled in the empty areas of the board with an icon I developed some years ago of a cub (Carrboro Cubs) hanging onto an eighth note, singing. I duplicated this image on several different colors of paper.

The year before I made: a curvy path across the board (three background colors: green on the bottom third, turquoise in the middle third, and blue at the top), a school house with open doors at the left end and another with closed doors at the right end, and signs noting the starting and finishing dates of school. Through the year, the kids were asked to make drawings or other representations of music activities/assembly programs we did, and these were posted along the path.

This year, I'm putting up fresh, blue paper for the background. I have a map of the world (in silhouette) that will go in the middle, and the caption will be, "My Favorite Music In The Whole Wide World." I'm going to have kids draw small pictures of their favorites and cram them all up there. Easy for me, fun for the students, and the parents love it. Our administrators love to see student-created stuff, and I can leave it up all year.

Learn the joys of a BORDER of some kind; it helps to tie everything together. Look through your old college keepsakes for any kind of program with pictures. If you have a chance to go to a conference or convention where suppliers are going to be exhibiting, go through the band and orchestra exhibits and pick up all the glossy pictures you can find. DON'T ever throw out old music or music books. Even if the material is unusable, you can use the pages of music for cutting out letters (so that you have "music letters" captions on your boards). Old wrapping paper can also be used in this way.

I have a medium-sized hall bulletin board beside my door where I post announcements of performances in the community and bulletins from church programs where kids have performed. For several years I've used the caption, "Music Hath Charms..." This year I'm changing it to "Music Makes Everything Sparkle!" I bought two rolls of holographic, sparkly wrapping paper to cover the background.