What does your EL kids bedrooms look like?

[kiwimum]

I remember thinking how nice it would be to design a babies room, making it all match and pretty.
Warm and inviting like the ones you see in those baby magazines. Oh how things are different now...... 
While I was pregnant I never got to do up the babies room at all, we were selling our house and we ended up moved about six times before we bought a house again. During this time I discovered Early Learning. Now my toddlers bedroom is like no other bedroom I have ever seen... you can defiantly tell as soon as you walk in that there is leaning going on.

This got me thinking, Id love to see what other EL mums and dads have done to their kids bedrooms and get some new idea. So Ill start by sharing what we have done and maybe someone might get some ideas from this or feel like sharing.


Stuck on the door to her bedroom are colour and the written word for the colours. All over the main wall there are large photo stickers of wild animals with the name of the animal written underneath "elephant, lion, zebra etc" We say good night to most of them before bed.
Most of her furniture has words written on it eg "bed" "bookcase" "door" "door stop" "armchair". Even the roof has stars and the word "stars" written up there.
Then down at her eye height is a mirror stuck on the door (with the word mirror), a blackboard painted onto the wall with blackboard paint so she has free range to draw whenever she wants.

All her clothes and nappies are in open boxes stuck up high on the wall, so they are out of her reach of a toddler which allows more creative wall space at her eye height underneath. Each box has words written underneath as well eg tops, pants, nappies, warm tops, wipes. I have another high shelf where I can put things I dont want her to get hold of eg new projects, glue, sissors etc
Also down low I have stuck velcro in patches on the walls so we can constantly change whatever we want depending on what she is interested in and learning.

I've drawn around her body on the wall and use this to help learn about body parts. I have butterfly's hanging from the roof that flutter with the slightest bit of wind.

She has a wardrobe that doesn't have many clothes in it but is full of future activities and flashcards.
And of course a bookcase at her eye level filled with books she can be rough with and then a higher bookcase with book that need a bit more care and need to be read by an adult.   

There are hook at her height with "dress up" funny looking cloths she can try and put on when ever she wants.
I also try not to have too many toys out at once and keep circulating them every week and keep what she is not using in the wardrobe.
I just made her a crocodiles head out of two old boxes and store plastic fruit inside it mouth for her to find. Oh and guess what, all the fruit have words on them. I first did this with her building block, I wish I had done it earlier as she loves to play with her block now that there are words on it. 

The word idea is spreading to the rest of the house, at my house you can find words in the bathroom, kitchen, lounge and even outside in the garden. We even wrote "dog" on our pet (she didn't mind) and my daughter loved it and quickly learnt to say "dog"

[Mandabplus3]

The biggest bedroom change in our home was the mattress on the floor instead of the cot. As my babies were active and walking so early, I felt a cot was not only dangerous but unnecessarily restrictive. So the cot was replaced with a large queensize mattress on the floor.
My children's bedrooms now look quite normal, a bit brighter than normal 
They do however have a toy room to die for! They have 24 hour access to a custom made double size easel with black board, paint pots, paper of many sizes, pencils, pastels, textas, stickers, collage....they have a child sized round table to share, for sit down construction. They have far too many toys. If it has any educational merit and I think they will enjoy it they end up with it    spoilt? Yes! But still I somehow managed to have them be grateful and appreciative. They don't get everything they ask for.
They spend hours playing together happily ( mostly  ) and very little time doing 21st century kid things like WII, XBox, TV.
All I have to do now is teach them to keep it clean! 

[Mela Bala]

Her bedroom sounds lovely     I love the idea of the chalkboard paint.  You are sooooo lucky I have been trying to convince my husband to let me use some magnetic paint.  I am looking forward to getting some other new ideas from parents here I am glad you posted this. Hopefully some of what we have done can be useful to others.  I will try to post links since I haven't taken too many pictures yet since most rooms are still a work in progress since we just moved.
My son just turned 2 so we changed his bedroom furniture.  In his bedroom he has murals of the world and solar system up since he was a newborn. A magnetic whiteboard with all his money, phonic, Mandarin and number magnets.  A bookshelf that is overflowing...  The rest of his books are in the library on the main floor.
His dinosaur kid safe mirror http://www.discountschoolsupply.com/Product/ProductDetail.aspx?product=16128&es=237530000ESC&utm_source=CSE&utm_medium=weblink&utm_campaign=froogle&cvsfa=408&cvsfe=2&cvsfhu=3136313238&gclid=CLvk7IKrt7ICFaOaPAodhn4AAg
Now we have added various science, geometry etc. posters that I stick on the walls with velcro so I can switch them up.  In his study/art room he has a kidcraft art table and easel.  We got him a light box which was a little expensive but worth it for keeping his attention in activities he would otherwise lose interest in.  That closet is full of art supplies for him to play with chalk, brushes, sponges, molds-play dough, finger paint, number and letter stamps etc.
I use the extra guest room to store all the early learning materials I need to make his activities so that I can just pull what we will be working on as we need it.  
People call the basement his learning lab.  I will attach a picture taken but it does not show the early learning components.  
His kid safety trampoline, balance board, hula hoop toss and jump game course we made up with cones and kid size stop, slow etc. road signs.
There is a pocket chart number line http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/seo/p%7CRR391~~.jsp?cs=PDP_3_RR391
Letter of the day pocket chart http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/seo/ca%7CsearchResults~~p%7CDD925~~.jsp  Which I love because if you remove all of the cards all it says on the canvas is All About__!  So I am going to turn it into an Element of the Day Chart after I print some files I created.
I am in the process of turning the downstairs bar area into a place where we can store and conduct science experiments and simple cooking activities.  It has two tiers of long countertops with storage shelves underneath a nice island with a kitchen type sink, refrigerator and storage space for things that are not for his hands without my eyes being on him.  

For the most part I try to keep only the activities we are currently working on out so things do not become cluttered or get too confusing.

[Tamsyn]

It's interesting you should ask.  I actually just made a video about it, mostly to answer questions about our co-sleeping arrangement.  All 6 of us sleep in the same bedroom every night, and that shocks a lot of people when they hear it, but the reality is that the bedroom is very big.  We do it because we really liked this town-home complex, with all of the nice sidewalks and grass that the kids can play on and ride their bikes, so we made it work in the bedroom.  But it's applicable to the EL question too.  We have a bracciation ladder and a crawling track, and I think that they are important, especially in the winter.  Utah is very cold and so it's nice for them to burn some energy in the comfort of our home.  The bookshelf in the video has musical instruments (mostly percussion), school books, math-u-see blocks, bits of intelligence cards, and educational media.  The DVDs on the top shelf are YBCR, MonkiSee, Baby Signing Time, Rusty and Rosy, Magic School Bus, and some LDS material.  The rest of our movies, stuff like Pixar, and Dreamworks, are kept in the other room.  We sometimes watch them, but they aren't as convenient.  I also have my YBCR cards stored with the movies.  The kids have a little playroom under our stairs, and there is a school table downstairs that we keep some of their toys on as well, things like a wooden train set, legos, and bubber.  We rotate our toys, as we don't have a lot of room for them in the house.  Someday I would love to have a large playroom for the kids with a slide coming down from a reading loft.  A girl can dream. 

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/KCPuaxOQp_o&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/KCPuaxOQp_o&rel=1</a>

We also have a nice reading nook at the top of the stairs.  There is a bookshelf with our best kids books (we rotate these too).  There is also a music-display kind of bookshelf.  We put all of our library books on this shelf, to help us keep them together for our library visits, as well as to prominently display them to help us get through the ones we want to read before the next library day.  Once the tiny kids CAN read, I think the best thing we have done in our EL learning is giving them the chance TO read.  I'm so grateful that we have a fantastic library in our town.  I'm just lucky that way.

[Korrale4kq]

I love how you all sleep in the same room. If I had my way I would sleep in the same room as our son and convert the second bedroom completely to an EL room.

[kiwimum]

Hey thanks for sharing, you guys have given me some new ideas.
I took some photos of my daughters room today, its nothing amazing but it is a changeable space and that's what I love about it. Id love to add some sort of climbing wall in there as well but that might just have to go outside.

[Krista G]

Tamsyn,

I love your triple bunks!  I wanted to do that for my kids when they were younger because my four girls shared a room, but we never did it.  It is really neat that you all sleep in the same room also.  My husband used to joke that we should have a huge bed so we could all sleep together.  Obviously, it is not for everyone, but I love the simplicity and closeness of your family.  I did not know you had another baby.  She is beautiful.  At first I thought it was a doll on the bed.  Congratulations!!!

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