This past week, I had the extreme privilege of visiting my childhood elementary school to check out the newest and best in classroom decorations! Despite their busy schedules - meetings and last minute preparations before school started the next day - the gracious teachers at Hartville Elementary welcomed me into their colorful and engaging world; a world in which they will spend countless hours the next 180 days, imp!acting the lives of the children in our community. I thank you all for dedicating your lives to helping our children grow, both as students and individuals. Here's to a brilliant school year, ladies and gents! {And thanks a million for allowing me the opportunity to visit your classrooms! I had a blast!}

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Welcome to Room 201 - home to Mrs. Walters' third graders! ...And you better watch out because it's a jungle in there! The jungle theme is one of our favorites this year and, having caught glimpses of zebra and leopard print while walking through the halls, I was super excited to check out this room in particular! Walking in, this "Advice" wall caught my eye immediately. The concept is super simple, but is a great way to help new students get acclimated to the new learning environment. Who wouldn't want advice from someone who has gone before?!

How To Survive in the Jungle

At the end of the year, provide each of your students with a sentence strip, markers, and a print of their school picture, having them create properly formatted/punctuated dialogue sentences containing words of wisdom for the next class. Here are a few of our favorite examples from Mrs. Walters' class...

• "Beat Mrs. Walters in math!" says Shane.
• "Remember not to shout out." says Jesse.
• Abigail says, "Make good choices!"

Jungle "Advice" Bulletin Board

• Background: Black bulletin board paper.
• Title: "Advice", "How To Survive in the Jungle", "Jungle Survival Guide", "Jungle Survival 101", etc.
• Border: Animal print trimmer.
• Decoration: Use your students' advice sentence strips, adding jungle accents if desired. Mrs. Walters used TREND's "Monkey Mischief" accents.

Can't wait to share more jungle fun tomorrow - be sure to check back! And, as always, we'd love to hear from you so be sure to leave us a comment below or connect with us on Facebook!