REDO

Today, at LBC, we honored a teacher who has taught tirelessly for close to 25 years now.  She has taught the Junior Church kiddos, ages 7-12ish for TWENTY FIVE YEARS!!!  I haven't really done anything for 25 years--except try not to gain too much weight, of which I haven't quite succeeded at all. :)

Throughout the past 4-5 months, my team (Donna, Pastor, Tim, John, Teresa, Lydia, Grant, Butch, and Ms. Peggy) at the church have been on a mission of sorts to redo the 25 year old Junior Church room.
Simple enough, right?!
My sister-in-law informed me that a certain super-humongous-mega church had skilled folks from Disney come in and design their children's place.  
Okay.  That's definitely NOT in the budget.
Alright.  What do we have to work with?

We have rose colored partitions and casino-style carpeting.  Check.  Not to mention an old communion table that somehow made it's way into Ms. Peggy's room along with some mature-floral fabrics here and there.  And by the way-- why, WHY, pray tell, are many church buildings decorated with feminine, floral things?!  There is also a wobbly old, tiny pulpit.

I began researching what other Junior Church rooms looked like, and I simply couldn't find anything.  I was struck with the fact that there isn't this plethora of pictures and ideas out there for children's classrooms in church buildings that I thought there would/should be in this day and age.  Also, I could just be lame-o at searching with the correct buzz words.:)

I wanted to post some pics of decoration ideas that we have been able to do with our church building because I couldn't find too many, and I really like aesthetics and organizing.

After talking to Ms. Peggy a few times and discussing what she does in the space and what her vision for it would be, we came up with these specific ideas:

IKEA, IKEA, IKEA.  
Donna and Pastor made the three hour round trip trek to IKEA and came back with the bulk of the new items.  EXPEDIT, a.k.a. cubbies, are great for classrooms because they only stick out 15 inches and they are a solution for stowing teaching items as well as giving a child their own space for crafts and personal items.  Throw some CAPITA legs on them, and they get a little dressed up.  I chose the 4 inch legs for these because I didn't want the cubbies eating up all of my wall space.  Obviously, tables and chairs are needed too.  Chairs can be expensive, and if you need 20 of them, it can start to eat at the bulk of your budget.  Ikea, once again, had affordable, stackable, durable, colorful chairs for around $15 a piece.
  

The tables were Kilzed and coated with special dry erase paint from Lowe's to make dry erase tables.  We went for stools around the table to keep the room from looking cluttered with too many chairs, plus, they stack neatly and efficiently when not in use.  And did I mention that they were highly affordable when you have to buy 20!  Ms. Peggy and her husband, Butch, painstakingly put all 30-some stools and chairs together.

    John and his wife, Teresa put together a TON of plastic bins from IKEA (those little suckers are NOT a snap to put together), while Bill and Dan wrestled the big furniture together.  IKEA furniture is only fun to buy and play Tetris with--attempting to fit it all in your vehicle.  Each child and teacher has a labeled personal cubby to stow away things during class.  There were A LOT of cubbies, but one needs places for teaching materials/resources and counter space to work on.  The red stepping book shelf is actually supposed to be mounted onto the wall, but the studs were not where they should have been, so we improvised and velcroed it to the cubby.

Target.com also came in handy.  In no way is this an endorsement to get a credit card, but IF you are disciplined and trustworthy enough to have/payoff a Target Card, ordering things WILL save you time and money, 5% to be exact.  Everything is still returnable to your local Target if it doesn't work out.  Forgot to mention, FREE shipping and handling right to your door so you don't have to battle through the store with kids in tow (not too many times, anyway:)

This room makeover may not have killed me, but it almost did my husband, Tim, who lovingly used his handyman abilities to mount these dog tails (from IKEA, of course) on boards that Pastor Kevin cut and beveled and Donna painted.  The "WELCOME TO JUNIOR CHURCH" is actually a vinyl lettering custom ordered from fruitfulvinecreations.com.  Tonya is the owner and is great to work with, giving churches a 20% discount.  You create your saying, choose your size, font, and color.  We wanted it to be mobile, so we transferred the vinyl onto a board instead of directly onto the wall.  

Typically, I LOATHE papers flapping on walls, or really anywhere, for that matter.  That's what bulletin boards/cork boards are for.  In this case, though, the partitions cannot withstand a lot of weight, so we had to consider that.  We also had to consider that the partitions, in fact, act as bulletin boards and allow one to put things up with tacks.  

This is a shower curtain from Target.com of a colorful world map.  We paired a white shower curtain behind it to make it pop and hung it with shower curtain hooks.  The stories are from a Samaritan's Purse magazine mounted on card stock paper.

This is a bar table from IKEA that we turned into a podium.  Notice the two arms under the table top.  You can hang your purse and bag from them without the table tipping over!  Pretty efficient of them.  Not pictured, but we purchased a $5 laptop prop as a book prop for on top of the new podium.

In the 25 years that Ms. Peggy has taught, she has had rules.  I wanted to try to write them out so that she and the kiddos could reference them as needed.  The print is from a shop on Etsy called Alexander Creative.  It's a custom print where you can choose the color of the background and your own words.  

The "ONLY SPEAK WORDS THAT MAKE SOULS STRONGER" is a print that's ready-to-order and available in a slew of cool color options.  All frames are from Art To Frames on Amazon.com.  More about them below.  

These are 24x36 frames--all of which have been ordered on Amazon.com with a company called, Art To Frames--great company from Brooklyn, NY to work with and shipping discounts offered when ordering multiples--and they are kind of a creation after that.  I painted the cardboard that came with them bright white and used wall decals also ordered from Amazon.com.  The black lettering is vinyl poster lettering from Target and the yellow is custom from Fruitfulvinecreations.com.  

  Ms. Peggy kept coming back to color--she wanted to use a lot of color to make the room more appealing to young kids.

 This might look like a mess, but it's ACTUALLY organized on a peg board that you might find in a garage.  The idea behind this is if you can see it, you might be more prone to use it.

These are materials that Ms. Peggy likes to use in different classes--games, felt boards, etc.  Tim, my big handyman, mounted the pegboard as well as any shelving, and he also drilled a hole for the lock on Ms. Peggy's yellow prize chest seen below.

The labeling idea came from my sister-in-law, Ang who uses name badge holders (Staples will give you a 20% discount if you buy 3 of an item) and cable zipties to attach the holders to various bins.  If there was not a way to use zipties, I improvised with professional strength pieces of velcro from Lowe's.  Nothing too fancy--just Word program on my computer and some white card stock paper.  I played with the fonts and chose a fun, but legible one.  The little orange and green cups on the counter are actually from the bathroom clearance end cap at Target.  They are now whatever we want them to be.  Someone wise once said that white is the number one color that people forget to use when decorating.  Guess what?!  We tried to remember that.  The little white marker holders on the counter tops are from the dollar bins at Target.

The white and turquoise, and also polka dot bins are from Target.com.  The clear LEKMAN boxes are from IKEA.  The tall polka dot trash can is actually a laundry hamper from Target.com.


Ms. Peggy was tickled with all the work so many put into this redo.  Lydia, my niece, helped Gram (Donna) paint the walls, while Grant changed out ruined ceiling tiles and flickering bulbs.  

Anyone who has had Ms. Peggy knows that the bigger church's children's programs have NOTHING on what she has to offer our kids on Sunday mornings here at Lighthouse.
I just want to say that Ms. Peggy is in a league of her own.
She loves her Lord and loves the kids of Lighthouse.
We are honored to serve with her.