- Decorating a Child’s Room
with a Volcano Theme, and Maybe Teaching Them Something
- by Joey Lewitin
( Decorating a child’s room
based on a theme, is a good way to focus your creative decorative
talents. Choosing a science based theme, means that you will
be reinforcing learning and thinking in your child every time
they walk into the area. However, you don’t want to decorate
their room in such a way that you make it unpleasant for them.
That is why you should talk with the child first, and discuss
how they feel about your ideas. Discuss various themes, and try
to steer them towards ideas that may give them a chance to learn
something about the world. If you can’t get them excited
enough to work with you, then it is probably not a good idea
to proceed. One theme which may interest them, is decorating
their room based on volcanoes. )
Within the silent mountain’s
belly, there is a fire growing hot. Its flames are fierce and
growing bolder, stronger, until the very rock around it melts
into an angry molten goop. The fire grows greater still, and
expands outward pushing against the mountains walls, seeking
to escape, growing hotter, fiercer, until, it explodes in a blast
of fire and ash that blots out the sky.
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This is the excitement of the
volcano, the idea of titanic destructive forces. Use the lure
of such ideas, to get your child to ask questions as you proceed
with the development of the area. Try and arouse their curiosity,
then help them find the answers. Gather lots of books with big
pictures, to use as references and inspirations for your work.
Before you begin, look through the books to find out about the
different rocks, effects, and structures that occur within a
volcano, in order to make the room as authentic as possible.
A good place to begin is the
floor. Unless the room has orange, red, or pink carpeting, you
may want to purchase a few red throw rugs to scatter about the
room. These can be pools of lava surrounded by rock. A game you
can play is to tell the child to avoid stepping on the lava,
so that they have to jump from bare patch to bare patch to get
around the room. This turns the entire space into a big toy.
Flames and lava flows which run
down the wall can be simulated by cutting out pieces of red construction
paper in the shapes of flames. Yellow or orange outlines drawn
into these will give them a nice effect. Thumb tack these to
the walls, and even the ceiling, to surround the area with fire.
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You can create whole volcanoes
in a similar manner, by using larger sheets of brown or gray
paper. Your volcanoes can be small, with the appearance of being
off in the distance, or huge reaching straight up to the ceiling.
Either way you can use cotton painted gray at the tops of the
volcanoes to create the look of smoke billowing from its crest.
A border of grey clouds along the top of the room, with a series
of volcanoes on the walls reaching up to it, can be a nice interplay
of dark and light colors. Experiment to see if this is an effect
that you and your child enjoy.
This kind of a theme goes hand
in hand with starting a rock collection. You can begin by purchasing
some rocks that really came from a volcano. With a little research,
you and your child may be able to locate rocks which are just
lying around from a volcanic explosion millions of years ago.
Even if they aren’t from a volcano, any interesting rocks
you find can be collected, and displayed in the room, to help
the overall ambience of the volcano that you are trying to create.
Designing the room together can
be both a wonderful bonding experience that also allows them
to learn something. Encourage them to research further, and to
make the room as realistic as possible. At the same time, engage
their imagination, and help them to develop a vision of what
their room should look like, and then implement it. In this way
you will be encouraging many positive traits in the child while
working with them will help the two of you grow closer.
Children should not try any of
these ideas out themselves without the consent and supervision
of an adult. Caution should always be used in any activity that
involves a child. Make certain that none of your decorative efforts
causes any damage to the child’s safety.
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