some ideas.....
make sure the room is interesting and inviting - dont have plain boring walls, hang up big sheets of bright colours. Right now i have purple and lime green and the kids love it!
put up a fishing net on the ceiling to hang things from. Have things hanging when they first walk in - pictures of suns, images of coins, big smiley faces, the word welcome, etc.
give them an escape area. i have a reading corner with cushions and those mosquito nets you get for your bed hanging from the ceiling. kids can crawl under the net and read. i actually have those nets in every corner of my room - all bright differnt colours (lime, orange, pink, purple). they are great to look at and super for hanging things off.
have the desks in an interesting way - try to avoid rows first up. Put them in groups so they can hve someone there sitting with on that first day.
put up lots of posters and images around the room. chuck up a poster about the days of the week, seasons, punctuation, spelling, grammer, inspirational quotes, images of kids hard at work etc.
get the kids to make, write or draw something first up. put this up straight away to give them a sense of ownership.
have somethign welcoming on your front door. I've got a huge big bee hive with 'Welcome to ----- with Miss --' and have 24 bees buzzing around the hive, each with a childs name on it.
hope this helps!
