As you are all getting ready to start a new year here is some advice on your wall displays!
Displays on the walls send messages to the children who work and play in your classroom every day, to the families who drop them off and pick them up, and to classroom visitors. Apply the same energy and consideration to classroom displays as you do to the planning the rest of your programme. Make sure that what you post on the walls reflects the creativity, learning and joy found in your classroom.
What should go on the walls?
First and Foremost, children’s art and creations
- Paintings
- Drawings
- Collages
- Weavings
- Writing samples
Charts related to children’s daily experiences
- Attendance
- Weekly jobs
- Hand washing
- Daily menus for snacks and meals
Curriculum-related items
- Planning sheets
- Materials generated by the children (for example, a story written by the class)
- Documentation panels with photos and work samples that show what children did and learned
- Graphs created by the children (for example, showing the children’s favourite books)
Photographs
- Children and families
- Teachers and other staff
- Community helpers
- Field trips
- Special trips
- Children learning through play
Commercial items (choose carefully and use sparingly)
- Reference materials featuring the alphabet or numerals
- Fine art reproductions to inspire young artists
- Posters that teach (for example, about local birds or trees)
- Posters about previous or future field trip sites
Required materials
- Safety notices (evacuation routes, fire procedures)
- Information for families to read and take home
Before displaying anything on the wall ask, Will it…
- Reinforce children’s experience?
- Highlight children’s creativity and skills?
- Make children feel proud of their work?
- Extend learning?
- Document children’s activities and learning?
- Tell others what we do in our program?
- Beautify the room?
- Create a homelike setting?
- Meet a health and safety requirement?
If you answer yes to one or more questions, then the item is worthy of display.
Ideas for displaying children’s work
- Invite children to select what they want to display.
- Have children sign their work
- Record what a child tells you about his artwork, if appropriate, on a sentence strip to post beneath it. This allows the art to remain intact, as the artist created it.
- Mat artwork with construction paper, poster board, fabric, or wallpaper samples.
- Make a frame out of Construction paper or poster board cut into strips or shapes (suns, hearts, leaves, etc.);
- Box lids (for a shadowbox effect);
- Painted ice pop sticks or wooden slats (decorated with pot holder loops, coloured rubber bands, mosaic tiles, or glitter);
- Fabric, pleated and stapled to look like curtains;
- Inexpensive plastic or wooden frames bought at discount stores, decorated by children or as is.
- Display the framed art alone or in a grouping.
