Ikea Collaboration
Ikea Collaboration
by Amy Bowker
November 23, 2019
I love Ikea. Always have. As a child, I would beg to go play in the massive ball pit. As a university student, I would go walk around with friends and we would design our dream homes and lives while enjoying cheap treats since we were broke. As a homeowner, I have bought many pieces from Ikea and my marriage has survived us building them together! And now as a mom, I love Ikea for all it’s organizational furniture to hide my son’s toys away, at least for a couple of seconds before he dumps them out again.
As a teacher, I have been grabbing all the Ikea catalogues I could carry and bringing them to school for my students to use to plan out their dream bedrooms. My students were always excited about this project but I’ve always wanted to take them there. I even wrote a blog post about Designing my Dream Classroom. Check it out here.
This year one of my student’s parents works at Ikea. She is beyond supportive of all the field trips and crazy ideas that I do throughout the year so I suggested the idea of going to Ikea with the class. She loved the Ikea. She approved with Ikea if we could come and helped organize an awesome day.
The students were given a clipboard with a bedroom and a budget list so they could keep track of what they were spending. The students started the day with a scavenger hunt that got them practicing their measuring skills. Then we took a tour ‘The First Five’ which are the first designed rooms Ikea has the beginning of the store so they could get a sense of what they could include in their bedrooms.
After we had lunch, the students were divided into smaller groups and we all headed into the bedroom section. Students chose their bed of choice and drew it into their bedroom using the dimensions listed on the tag or by them measuring it themselves. We then toured around Ikea so they could add more furniture to their bedrooms.
The students were engaged, excited, respectful, and proud. Multiple customers watched us as we sketched out our drawings and were asking the students questions. They commented to me that they were so happy to see students in the store learning. WINNING!
At the end of the day, we were rewarded with ice cream to celebrate!
And all teachers know how teacher tired you are at the end of a field trip!
