Over the pandemic, a lot of things at my school were lost or thrown away. This included all the floor seats, a floor mat and folding chairs for the lesson area. One bench remains. Due to this, my principal had ordered some new flexible seating as this is his goal for all of our reading rooms within the next year or two.

I wanted my classroom to feel like home. If you have followed our blog you know I am a big proponent of flexible seating in the classroom. (See post here.)

That being said, I was so over the half broken, barely standing, dull brown and worn looking random, non-matching brown school book cases. So I decided that this year I would invest some money into new bookshelves (yay for IKEA)!

So I had to completely reorganize my library. That room’s library had previously been the 9th-10th grade library, so I had many books that had to go. We also had a mountain of new books the city had sent us that we had to stamp and organize between the teams. We still have about 10 boxes to do this with, so basically lots of new books coming in. I needed more space. I decided to go with the basic Billy Bookshelf from IKEA, the largest they had which was $89.99 each.

While the new-ness and clean white of the shelves was enough to definitely up the quality of the room, the goal was for it to feel like home. So I decided to splurge a little with a coupon that I had for Target and purchased this decal wall paper as a backdrop on the shelves. It has really helped establish the them of nature and greenery in the classroom (which has become the theme of the year decor-wise).

People keep stopping by my room even just to compliment me on it, multiple students have commented on how comfortable it all makes them feel and even, yes, like home! So mission accomplished! 🙂 Classroom Redo: Part 2 coming soon with the final results….