My son started fourth grade this year, so when I saw a cute wooden sign that spelled out “FOURTH” in Target’s Bullseye section in August, I honestly thought it went with the back-to-school crafty and decor stuff. I had to grab it. You can’t beat $3 for a cute wood sign, right? It wasn’t until my daughter pointed out the blue color that it occurred to me it was actually left over from their Independence Day items. Oops! Either way, I transformed it into this cute DIY Chalkboard Classroom Decor in just a couple of easy steps.
If you’re thinking, “well how can I make one then?” Have no fear, you can easily glue 4″ or 5″ wood letters together to spell any grade you like. Note: you may want to go with a giant K for Kindergarten unless you want to drop $30 to $40, lol.
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DIY Chalkboard Classroom Decor
Materials
- Wood Word Decor of your choice OR
- Wood Letters (+glue)
- Black Chalkboard Paint
- Paintbrush
- Pencil
- White Oil-based Paint Marker
- Chalk
DIY Chalkboard Classroom Decor Steps
1: Paint two to three coats of black chalkboard paint on your wood word. Let each coat dry completely before you paint on the next one.
TIP: I have found with chalkboard paint, you really have to be precise about the number of coats. Too few, and the chalk won’t write on it well. Too many, and the chalk will dig into the paint.
2: Use a pencil to sketch out the teacher’s name. I thought the vertical stem of the F was a good place for mine.
3: Take a white oil-based paint pen and write the teacher’s name over your pencil sketch. You can get much fancier than I did, but I like to keep things simple and legible.
TIP: Be careful when using paint pens. You have to press down slightly to get the paint out, but if you press too hard or too often, the paint will pour out of the pen, ruining your project or causing you to start over.
4: For mine, I chose to write the student’s name’s and the year in chalk all over the word. They can be easily wiped off for each year or the teacher can draw designs or words as they see fit.
That’s it! I told you this DIY Chalkboard Classroom Decor was easy to make. Something else I love about this project is it makes a great teacher gift for male or female teachers. That doesn’t come along very often, lol.
Do you guys like to make teacher gifts for your kids’ teachers? I love it, especially when they’re not common like during Christmas or Teacher Appreciation week.
If you’re looking for more ideas, be sure to check out our other Teacher Appreciation crafts and if you want to see a huge resource for teacher appreciation project ideas, definitely visit Favecrafts.
