Word Wall Makeover

Last year was my first year back into first grade. There was a lot to do in a short amount of time. Not only did I have to set up a new classroom but I had to declutter and clean from previous teachers that were in the classroom. There was a whole lot of "What is this?!".

Thankfully one of my teaching friends helped me put up my bulletin boards. One of them we just put fabric and border on for open house and beginning of school until I could decide how I wanted the Word Wall to look.  I knew I wanted it to be frogs.  My room seemed to have a lot of green, blue, and frogs so I decided on blue and green. 

I picked a pretty aqua blue color and couldn't find frogs anywhere. I looked at a local teacher store, Michaels (they sometimes have beginning of the year teacher stuff), Walmart, Staples, and the Dollar Tree.  No frogs.  Finally I decided I would trace some die cut frogs I had from a previous school.  It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it would do for now.

Here is the before picture.  I like the blue and I like the frogs but I didn't like the two together. I think the blue is too dark with the frogs.

This year I kept looking at the Word Wall bulletin board and trying to decide what to do. Once the words are on the wall, the blue and green don't bother me as much. I almost decided to live with it. And then a parent brought me some things from the teacher store and in the bag were three rolls of border. I spotted some green border with colorful dots.

My hubby came to help me with the bulletin board and I asked his opinion. After much thought, discussion, and walking around the school for ideas, we decided on an orange background. We put up the orange bulletin board paper and it looked horrible!  You could see through it!  All of my other boards have fabric on them, so the paper looked even worse.  We decided to make a trip to Walmart.

Walmart had some orange fabric but it was $5-6 per yard.  Eeek!  We looked at the sheets and found a flat twin sheet for only $4.  Woohoo!

I told hubby that I wanted some wiggle eyes on the frogs. They needed a little something to make them look happier.  I had ordered a frog notepad in hopes of using some cutesy frogs but they were too big.  We just added wiggle eyes to the frogs I already had and I think they are cute. 

 

Here is the after shot.  Hubby decided to add larger wiggle eyes to the vowels to make them stand out.  I think they are funny.  I like the large eyes better. Maybe all of the frogs will have large eyes soon.  I'm still trying to decide if I will add mouths to the frogs.  What do you think?