Back To School Decorating Ideas

Back to school decorations evoke warm, nostalgic thoughts about bygone school days. Just the thought of crayons, number 2 pencils, chalkboards, flash cards, and rulers bring a smile to my face. Get the new school year off to a good start by adorning your home with some of these back to school decorating ideas. It will not only show your kids how much your family values a good education, but it’ll brighten up your house, too.

September Ninth Designs provides instructions for making this colorful crayon wreath. You could put your child’s name on the miniature chalkboard and put it on her bedroom door.

Leanne from Organize Your Stuff Now made her back to school wreath out of pencils. I love the cork board circle in the center. It makes this wreath functional as well as beautiful. It screams “good morning, sunshine!”

What could be more iconic than a wreath made from the pages of books? At Lovely Etc. Carrie’s book-page wreath is made from an old bible, so it’s meaningful as well as beautiful.

Family Frugal Fun provides a great tutorial for making this wreath out of wood rulers. All you have to do is hot glue 6″ rulers to an embroidery hoop and embellish as you wish. It would look great on any door or wall in your home – even your kid’s bedroom.

How about stringing a garland made from flash cards across your child’s bedroom? If you don’t already own a box, Sara from Confetti Sunshine even provides free printable vintage flash cards. Did you know that I used to be a high school math teacher? I wish I’d have thought of this when I was decorating my classroom. I love it!

This alphabet wall decoration idea from Parents website is actually intended for a nursery. As a matter of fact, baby shower guests were each asked to decorate one letter of the alphabet for the mother-to-be. Wouldn’t it be fun to have each student in a teacher’s homeroom embellish a letter of the alphabet as a back to school project to decorate their own classroom?

Close your eyes and imagine the aroma of a new box of crayons. The crayons smell almost as good as they look. Savings Lifestyle tells you how to attach crayons to a tin can to make a pretty vase. It could also function as a pencil holder for your child’s desk.

Amanda’s Parties To Go uses the same concept but with yellow pencils instead of crayons. She even provides free printables that say things like “Welcome Back” in case you want to give one to your kid’s teacher to start the school year off right.

Ruth from Viva Veltoro shows you how to make a pencil vase too, but this one is made from colored pencils. I am currently decorating a bedroom in rainbow colors so I’m going to make one of these pretty vases and fill it with colorful flowers.

At this time of year, you can get crayons on sale for next to nothing. Why not do what this Rock Star Room Mom did by making a colorful desk organizer? I love the square shape because it’s so functional for office supplies like sticky notes.

Transform a wood yardstick into a delightful ruler clip art rail by attaching giant wooden clothespins. Ana White provides DIY instructions so you can build a wonderful rail to display your kids’ artwork – or homework, or report card, or class schedule.

This back to school organizing wall from Crafty Southern Mama is not only attractive, but functional. The framed cork boards can be personalized for each child. I love the idea of attaching a weekly schedule to each kid’s board so that he knows at a glance what’s up that day at school, be it gym class, library, music, or whatever activity that might require packing something special in his backpack that day.

Making your back to school projects both functional AND pretty could go a long way toward developing positive attitudes about school in your house. By the way, if you want to celebrate the first day of school with a special dinner, check out my blog post about back to school table setting ideas. How do you like the crayon vase that I made this weekend that’ll adorn my breakfast table on the first day back to school? It was fun and fast to make and everybody loves it!