Top 5 Creative Ideas on How to Decorate the Child’s Room

«The space we live in influences us…»
Alexei Karpov

1. The world-known mathematician of the 19-th century Sophiya Kovalevskaya writes in her memories that the passion for this science awoke in her in a great part because of the walls in her room when a child: for the lack of money there were pages from the maths book instead of wallpaper on the walls. She was very much interested in the unknown signs on the walls and she was studying them for much time.

2. Once, when I was 20, I was painting a picture in oil in an American college. Unexpectedly, my hand depicted an African elephant at the river and a canoe with two travelers going down the river. Not the plot itself was quite surprising – I had been thinking over it in advance – but the style which the travelers were painted in. When I was working at that part of the picture, I used the style of the paintings which I had been looking at near my bed during the whole childhood. There was rainy Paris in those paintings; impressionism. But I realized the parallel between my painting and those pictures only when I had finished the work. That is how the subconsciousness works.

While I was waiting for our daughter to arrive, I cross-stitched many cheerful little animals: for our apartment and as presents. Now Sonya sees this cross-stitched pictures from her cot which are now in passe-partout and framed. And beside them, there is a picture by Chinese masters of silk thread which was bought by our dad in the country situated next to ours when our daughter was “minus 4 months old”.

The alphabet with animals was also quite appropriate. I bought it not for the letters but for the animals. Sonya is so much excited by the pics (which she always looks at and which she always tries to reach and touch to the accompaniment of her mummy’s “bow-wow”, “miaow-miaow” and “croak-croak”) that, I am sure, the images of the letters will also leave their mark in her memory.

3. A friend of ours decorated the whole child’s room as a ship deck. On the wall, there is a prow of a ship and a sea landscape with far sand beaches painted in the style of children’s books. There are wooden brown handrails fixed at the walls, a sea cable and an anchor. There is also “a sky” above the “ship”. With the help of little light bulbs, they could made such a position of constellations which was above the city when Yegor was born.

4. One more idea for the decoration of the walls comes from the blog «Tvorchestvo Knopochek i Karapuzov»: pictures from putty on big sheets of paper made by children and their parents – very beautiful, indeed!

5. An idea from Alexei Karpov, a physicist and mathematician, painter writer, father of four children: “When my boys were quite little, we started experimenting with images on a large part of the wall over the sofa: we cut pieces of coloured paper or coloured cardboard of different shapes and glued it to the wall-paper making an abstract composition.

Little children are not always inclined to do the same thing for a long time. Thus, during the day, we usually glued only several new pieces to the wall having moved them for a while according to the composition set at the very beginning or immediately feeling the right place for them.

Mosaic on the wall became our companion, our little creative niche in the interior of the apartment. In several years, we got tired of it. We wanted to change the image on the wall and create something new. And we tore off the pieces of the cardboard from the wall without any hesitation. Do you think the process of tearing off was not interesting?!..”

“Then I used white paper as wall-paper for our walls. Afterwards, my children and I painted all this with old watercolour. Just spots, free designs and changing colours. In some time, there appeared other, more specific, images on our walls: a fish, a large window to another reality with a window-sill and things lying on it, a church with golden domes, a sun… Of course, there are paintings everywhere in the apartment: mine and my children’s…”

(Extracts from the books by A. Karpov “Young Magic Frog or How to Draw with Kids” and “You Can Draw”)

Everything mentioned above is not only ideas on the design in the apartment. Look deeper . It also “early-childhood development” and “home schooling” of your little one. The kid involved into the creative process develops. He sees that it is not creative work for creative work. We are “carve a home”, create some certain design and, consequently, comfort for our body and soul. Moreover, the kid develops psychologically. His interests are taken into consideration, his wishes are listened to, his ideas are made real.

And how have you decorated the walls in the room of your kid? Let’s create one more Top 5 ideas! Looking forward to your comments!

Anastasia

For this article in Russian, please, visit the Russian version of “Parents’ Ideas”

Next time you will learn why a baby needs pockets on his clothes…

Illustrations in the Article:

Pic. 1 – by a Korean artist; Pic.2 – “African Elephant” by Anastasia; Pic. 3 – photo by Anastasia; Pic 4 – from the blog “Tvorchestvo Knopochek i Karapuzov”: Pic 5 – photo by Natalie