Learning Spaces - A Meek Moose Adventure - Color Scheme

Before last summer- I never thought much about my classroom "theme".  To be honest- I'd never really heard of it until two years ago, and my first reaction was "That is waaaaaaaay too much work!  Plus, I thought it was frou-frou.  Then I took a learning spaces class with Sally Haughey from Fairy Dust Teaching and I changed my mind about it- a little.  

Today I'm just going to talk about color scheme.  I'll go into other things about my classroom in other posts.  My color scheme is based on this color palette, which I found at Design Seeds.

But, a little Business before we get started:

Jess at I {Heart} Recess is having a 1,000 follower giveaway, and aside from having many fantastic prizes- The Meek Moose is offering up Winner's Choice in one of the prize packs.  So go try you luck by clicking her button below!





So- back to the color.  I was looking at the Science Penguin's Facebook Page the other day, and she posted a pretty interesting article about classroom decor. It basically came down to the more decorated your room is, the more distracting it is.  People {teachers} get really hot over this topic. And I'm not interested in debate- it's a personal preference thing.  But let me submit to you my reasoning on classroom design: 1. Don't dress your room like a circus and be surprised when a clown shows up. 2. Rainbows are beautiful- but they are also way up high in a complimentary colored sky and only last a few minutes. 3. There is something to say about how being in nature is grounding and calming.  What does nature look like? And that's where I get my three main colors.

There is lots of information out there on the psychology of color.  The picture above goes to one of these posts.  You can see quickly why blue and green are good choices.  This particular one has a negative for brown- but if you keep searching:

I put this in to play in my room in a few different ways.  I used fabric (duck cloth specifically) in brown and green to cover up cabinets and boards in my room. Here are a couple of pictures from when I first got my room set up this past September:

Beneath those brown curtains are tons of teacher books and boxes of manipulatives.  Covering them up removed distraction.  Those cubbies are actually for student supplies, and those were my library books in them at the time of this photo- they ended up elsewhere.  The nice thing about the curtains is that I can put any anchor chart or sentence strip up on them using stick pins.  They also contour to anything possibly sticking out beyond the lip of the shelves.

I put the green on the bulletin boards.  The blue I chose was more of a sky blue, and pretty stimulating, so I made it more of an accent than a focus.  Those squares on top of the bulletin board are covered in art paper from the teacher's lounge.  They were part of some really really really ancient computer programming game in the 80's that my Dad found.  They turned out to be magnetic on one side- so a bonua is that I can put things up on them easily with a magnet.

On areas of walls where I needed to hang more things, but everyone knows how unforgiving cinder blocks can be- I wrapped foam board in the fabric and hot glued them up.  This area in particular is my data wall. I stapled sheet protectors and sentence strips up on it so I could change data in and out but still have headings for each area.

And that striped paper?  Wrapping paper from Target that had my color scheme.  It was a nice hit of pattern in just one area of the room, above the board.

When I was looking for an alphabet scheme, I found these Ground, Grass, Sky letters. It's based on a Montessori concept.  I found out just recently that the website where I had downloaded them from was sketchy- the guy was a child porn guy or something- so I'm going to have to come up with an alternative alphabet for next year.

Awesomely, Mr. Sketch has these three colors in their marker pack.  Mmmmmm- mango blue... Anyway- I use these three colors when I write on sentence strips and anchor charts too. I saw a post once about a teacher who did that, coordinated her anchor chart colors to her room scheme- but now I can't find it...

I also use these colors when we create word cards.  I don't have a picture, but whenever we generate words for any subject we might be writing about- I write nouns in brown (because we're grounded by labels), verbs in green (we actively play in the grass) and adjectives in light blue (airy thoughts).

Now, remember that design seeds palette I had- there were three other colors:

I use these in different places in the room for accents.  Flowers especially.  In the end, I have a calm color scheme- but it's still fun and I don't feel confined by it at all.  My room is warm, balanced, and a place I don't mind spending time in.  It's also pretty easy to shop for- as these colors aren't hard to find.

If I get a hankering for wild colors, I can create clipart or Activinspire charts.  No big.

Speaking of clipart- I put up another Armadillo pack today.

And made an animoto video:

Ah me, I love that little guy.

How do you feel about color scheme?