Revamp Your ECE Classroom Space: Transforming Classrooms with Creative Hacks
Anisha Grossett • March 18, 2024
One of the best things you can do to keep your classroom children engaged, curious, and stimulated is to change your layout, add different textures, or utilize window space and ceiling areas.
Redesigning should be your friend, not something scary!
Adding wall art, decor, and organic materials should never be overlooked. This is a classroom, yes, but it is also your home away from home. Let's make it beautiful and functional together with these classroom hacks.
The first and easiest thing I always recommend
for any classroom is bringing in live plants. Artificial plants can offer some benefits, but the advantages of live plants outweigh the cons of nurturing them. Plants offer stress-reducing and calming properties that can help with mental ailments. They also improve the air quality around you, which is a great hack for fresher air when your classroom windows don’t open. Plus, it's fun to have the children water and garden with you—a hack for children is to cut a paper plate on one side into the middle and place it around the plant on top of the soil, acting as a barrier. This will keep any unwanted hands out of the soil!
The next recommendation
I would make is to get some wall decor! This is helpful for you as the educator, creating a second home for the children and for someone who enjoys both functional and unique art. The best thing you can do for your classroom is to get some stuff on the walls, using macrame hangers for your plants, stuffed animals, or other items. Have some natural materials on your bulletin boards like burlap, fabric pieces, or even faux fur or plants as borders. Now, I’m sure you’re wondering why this is even a recommendation, let alone a top recommendation. That's because these are also functional—they help reduce sound in the classroom. Reducing classroom sounds helps children develop speech and even reduces some unwanted behaviours.
The last recommendation
I can give—aside from learning more about your specific room's needs and interests—is to add lights and covers to the lights. Classrooms can go from very energetic to winding down for nap time by simply changing the lights from white/yellow to blue. Great ways to incorporate this are through cost-effective LED light strips, fairy lights, and even desk lamps with blue light bulbs. We forget as adults that light is a visual cue for us. The light tells us when it's bedtime, or for those of us from the 80s and 90s when to get home. The light also tells us when to wake up. Why can’t it tell us when to feel calm or when to feel kindness? To further that, studies have also shown light can be used as therapy to heal the body. Utilizing lights and colours to your classroom's needs is a home run all around; it's good for the soul, the body, and the mind!
Redesigning your room shouldn’t cost hundreds of dollars. These three incredible hacks should cost under $20 each, or you can shop around for a bargain on local marketplaces to stretch your dollar.
These are so simple but often missed. Once you start integrating any one of these into your classroom, you’ll notice a difference in the children, how you show up to educate the little ones, and how many parents and peers want to incorporate your ideas into their spaces.
Move over trips and falls and organized sports, we have a new injury inducer in town for our children and it’s starting to raise some heated debates. When we look at what’s happening with the injuries we see with children today, it’s not the same from when I was a child. I was falling out of trees, cuts and scrapes on knees and elbows from going too fast around a corner or down a hill on my bike. I was learning physics in the hands-on experiential way, so that when I was a 16 year old driving my dad’s pickup truck, I was already familiar with sliding tires and changing road conditions. I took the lessons I learned going over the handlebars and the feelings of losing control and used them to become more aware and resilient during stressful situations as I grew older into adulthood. I recently read an article online talking about emergency room injuries with children in British Columbia and the number one culprit on the list comes from E-scooter accidents. I definitely have my opinions on these scooters, but we’re not gonna dive into that one today. I want to tell you how easily these injuries can be prevented with a little bit of background education, situational awareness, and some foundational motor development. A lot of these children likely missed the opportunity of learning how to ride a bike properly, they don’t have the vestibular development and appropriate proprioceptive skills to get their balance and their coordination correctly on a scooter. If they never learned the mechanics of how to ride a bike, then how do they know that when they go around that sharp turn and hit a little bit of loose gravel that the back end might slide out a little bit. These foundational fine and gross motor skills are imperative for children to use these conveyances safely, not to mention the spatial awareness needed to navigate the world around them while travelling at high speeds. Parents often send their children out on these scooters without helmets, further exacerbating the risk level. Scooters pose a much higher risk than a traditional bike because you don't need to invest the same amount of time learning to “ride” it. The physics and mechanical lessons I learned as a child are often missed in this day and age and it’s showing up in our emergency rooms across the country.
The classroom is more than a place we work — it is a second home for both educators and the children who spend their days within it. Because of this, how our environment is designed matters deeply. Children are constantly communicating with us through their behaviour, movement, and engagement with the space. When we pause to observe what children’s actions are telling us, the environment shifts from being a pain point to becoming the third teacher. What messages does our classroom environment send to children the moment they enter the space? Listening to children when placing furniture and designing play areas is more than an act of respect — it reflects our belief that children are competent and capable learners. It acknowledges that children are active participants in their learning, not simply occupants of a room. When the environment truly meets children’s needs, we often see calmer bodies, deeper engagement, and more meaningful play. How often do we adjust the environment based on children’s cues rather than adult convenience? So, what areas within a classroom should be considered non-negotiable because they support regulation, development, and a sense of safety?