As a child, I loved to play school all the time. As soon as my children were old enough to start learning, I treated our household as little classroom. On one of the children’s bedrooms in our old house, I painted murals all over the walls but in the other room, I used chalkboard paint and created my own chalkboard. Along the top of the wall, I hung a ribbon so that I could clothespin their beautiful pictures and completed worksheets to display.

Then I went to a thrift store and purchased an old desk. My husband picked up some [purple] colored chalkboard paint and I painted the top, then painted all of the metal pieces, and lined the inside with yellow felt. It looked new and vibrant, the kids just loved it!

Since moving to our new home, I’ve decided to focus the walls more on organization. Shelves, hanging organizers and so forth, which I’ll be posting about at some point in the future! When my oldest daughter’s kindergarten teacher suggested practicing her sight words on the sidewalk with chalk, I had an idea! We don’t have a sidewalk on my street but I’d seen some Pinterest pictures of people mounting chalkboards on their backyard fences. I couldn’t find any chalkboards that I found inexpensive enough, even used, so I decided to make my own!

I purchased a big can of chalkboard paint and created a rectangular chalkboard to the best of my ability. Then pick up a few sponges from the dollar store to wipe it down and it’s as easy as that!

With a bigger picture in mind, I also painted tall blades of grass. Right now it looks so basic but the kids are just loving it! They have requested everything from lions to monkeys to giraffes so it should be a fairly busy chalkboard jungle/zoo/forest mural soon! I thought about not sharing until I’ve painted the animals around it but I’ll just come back here and update with them later. 🙂