Kindergarten Squared: Hallway Displays for BACK TO SCHOOL!

Woot! Woot! We survived the 2 weeks of getting our classroom all set-up AND our FIRST DAY of school with the kiddos! And oh my word....I LOVE them already! They totally stole my heart. The mischievous ones right along with the little sweet ones. We are going to have an entertaining year for sure! Love them to pieces!
So each year, our whole hall goes ALL OUT to make some super cute hallway displays for back to school. It's the first thing our new families see as they are coming down the hall to meet us at our Orientation afternoon. Of course we want to make a great first impression, not to mention we are all a little bit competitive and like to make each other step up our game from year to year! ;)
So here's what we came up with for our display this year!

So I do have to say I'm pretty darn proud of this. First off, we came up with the idea COMPLETELY by ourselves. I mean, that's a pretty big deal...right? Since Pinterest hit the scene, I mostly just hopped over there and found something. But this idea...it just came to us. Well...we did have a little help! Here goes....The adorable lady selling popsicles out of the back of our truck is my bestie and my teaching TA. We take an annual girls trip with another longtime teaching friend, and we've just added said besties oldest daughter to the mix the last 2 years. Maggie is 24 so she counts for an adult, plus she keeps us young (I mean...Christie and I are in our mid forties...sometimes naps sound better than late nights out if you know what I mean!)

Anyway, as we were soaking up the sun relaxing on the beach..."When what to our wondering eyes did appear, but an ice cream truck bringing lots of cheer!" We heard the tunes playing and Maggie and I were both like "Hey, we could do a hall display!" I mean seriously, do we teachers ever STOP doing the teacher thing...I mean ever...even while relaxing on the beach!!!

So the idea was hatched then and there. Maggie said she could do her magic on the popsicle creating using her Cameo, Silhouette, or whatever her fancy machine is! Popsicles...done! I knew I could use some KG fonts to bust out a cute title. So all that was left was an ice cream truck design. That would be easy. I headed over to TPT and found some cute clip art from Monster Wrangler Mike. Normally Christie has me print it out, transfers it to a transparency, enlarges it onto the board using an overhead, traces it onto butcher paper, and 10 hours later...VOILA! But seriously, she was working a part time summer job and wasn't able to help. Maggie and I have NO PATIENCE for that. So we did the super fast route of printing out his ice cream truck image, and drawing that sucker freehand on the paper! I think we kinda rocked that part!

Then we put it all up. I knew it needed something else...especially a way to show the kid's names. So I added the "Fogle and Mappin's KINDERGARTEN Ice Cream Truck" sign and put the kiddo's names as "Flavors of the Year". It was still missing something...in comes my amazing coworkers to save the day. Meredith, the Pre-K teacher from across the hall, says "Why don't you put your pictures on there? One of you driving and one of you selling popsicles?" She's a genius I tell you. So we took some photos, cut them out...and BAM! It was finished. (Unless you count the fact that I was driving a magical truck because I had no steering wheel! In came another fabulous coworker, Janene, who printed me one and even added it to the display!) DONE! and DONE!

Here are just a few of the other super cute hall displays. Some of these are original ideas, and some were inspired by Pinterest, but I think they all turned out fantastic!