You Can Use This Cute Bulletin Board Idea to Recognize Achieving Students
Every year we recognize students who scored proficient or above on our state test. We think of a theme and build a wall around it. Our principal usually is the one who decides on a phrase for the year. This year she coined the phrase “Ignite and Inspire (our school’s name) is on Fire”. I really can’t take credit for all the decoration because several people were involved in the whole project.
If you have been following my blog for long you will remember our Olympic themed bulletin board from last year…well we put all that yellow, orange, and red cellophane to good use again for this year! Oh, and the Christmas lights that we made the fire out of…yep, we used them again too, but in the rocket flame this time…see….
Then to recognize all of our kids, we took their pictures and placed them on little fireballs.
We got the glitter scrapbook paper at Hobby Lobby and our whole staff helped cut most of them. One of our teachers freehanded the stencil for the fireball. (how talented!)
Here is an up close view of a fireball…this one turned out lopsided. I’m not sure why I chose to take a close up of it????
Finally the hallway view…
Another Cute Door {or Bulletin Board} Decoration!
Here it is… FINALLY! My new door decoration for this year. I named my room the “Math Cave” since my room is so small and huddled behind a bunch of bookshelves. I feel sort of like my room IS a cave! All of the eyeballs you see are like imaginary creatures in the cave. The comments in speech bubbles around the door suggest that the creatures are afraid of the dark. To bring in some mathematical thinking, the purple poster in the center prompts the children to count the creatures’ eyeballs in groups of two to find out how many creatures are in the dark math cave. You can download the bulletin board speech bubbles and sign for free right here if you want to recreate the door idea. I made most of the eyeballs out of leftover cutouts from the cricut cutter when various letters were cut out. It really bothers me that the words “Math Cave” are off center, but I glued them down and couldn’t very well rip them off without destroying the background. Oh, well, there are more important things to worry about at this time of the school year! The leafy green border is like vines growing around the cave.
Below are posted two pictures of my door. The second one is closer up so you can see the words more easily.
Get Straight Letters On Your Bulletin Board Every Time!
Have you ever been frustrated after carefully stapling your letters to the bulletin board only to find that your letters were crooked as you stepped back from the board. Here is the solution I use. Tack each letter to the board with a pushpin and step back from the board. If you notice that a letter is crooked or off center, you can easily move the letter by pulling out the pushpin. You don’t have to remove staples!
Try This Incentive to Encourage Students to Count to 100
The idea of belonging to a club makes kids feel like they belong. With that said, one of our kindergarten teachers came up with the idea of belonging to the “100 Club”. What does it take to belong to the 100 Club? Well, you guessed it…you must be able to count to 100! I took this idea a step further and suggested that we hang all of the kids pictures on the wall that were in the 100 club. We will add to this as the remaining students are able to count to 100. The kids have taken an extra interest in counting to 100 especially if their pictures aren’t on the wall! This display of the students’ pictures has grabbed students’ attention of course as well as parents and staff members. We even have a kindergartener that told her teacher, “I counted to 100 in my pillow 3 times last night before I went to bed.” 🙂
Bulletin Board On Fire!
For the past two years we have honored students who scored proficient or advanced on the state benchmark exam by displaying their picture in a creative way on the wall as soon as you enter the school. Our principal told us this year that our theme would be “Let’s Keep the Torch Burning!” That sparked the Olympic theme idea to make our Wall of Fame. We decided to make gold medals for each student and place their picture on each medal. The gold circles were cut out on a Cricut from gold scrap book paper. Then we hung the medals on red ribbon in the hallway with the students’ names below their picture. We originally wanted to hang the medals on red white and blue ribbon, but the store we ordered from wasn’t able to order an additional ribbon.
Then we placed a torch scene on the adjacent bulletin board to finish out the Olympic theme. The large gold fire “bowl” is a plastic flower pot spray painted gold that we had cut in half…thanks to one of our teacher’s husbands. The fire inside of the bowl is held up with a semi circular piece of corrugated cardboard with holes punched in it to hold the white Christmas lights and twisted cellophane. The torches on the sides are made with gold poster board rolled up and stapled. Then red, orange, and yellow cellophane are stuffed in the top to mimick fire.
To give the board more pizazz, we included Christmas lights stapled behind the red and yellow cellophane both in the fire “bowl” and on the bottom of the bulletin board. We set the lights on a glimmer setting so that the flames actually look like they are flickering. Covering the lights first with red cellophane helps hide the dark green cords. Then layering with yellow and orange adds a nice fire effect. Thanks to one of my followers who told me about an Olympic theme that she was incorporating with tiki torches for math fact races. She said that she used a battery operated candle inside the torches to make them look like they were burning. This gave me the idea for using Christmas lights.
All of the kids, parents, and staff who walk by exclaim things like….oooooh! cute! pretty!
We know that we have definitely put a spotlight on the kids who worked so hard last year.
Cute Bulletin Board with Social Studies and Math Integrated!
Well, I haven’t been behind a computer screen much at all this week because I have been putting my room back together and decorating my door. I don’t have many bulletin boards to cutesy up, so I take out my cutesyness on my door. I thought I would share this idea with you all. I came up with this idea last year when there was discussion about integrating science and social studies into math and literacy. I had read the book America by the Numbers: One Nation which made me want to decorate my door with a flag and ask questions about the number of stars, stripes, etc to infuse math. 
The only problem I faced was finding an appropriately sized flag. To buy a large one was too much money and too large for my door. The only other ones I had seen while shopping were too small. Just my luck last week I was talking to a colleague who didn’t want a large flag covering up her only window. So, we traded flags because I had an extra one that was smaller from somewhere rolled up in a closet. Now, what to use for a background? I was originally going to use some cloud bulletin board paper at available at teacher stores when I stumbled across this adorable sparkly fireworks fabric at Jo-Anne’s. A little plug for Jo-Anne’s–they offer teacher discounts! Then I made some white stars for the door with math questions in them to stimulate student thinking. If you want to use this idea, I made the stars available for free here: StarsForFlagBulletinBoard.
Cute Winter Door Decoration!
How Can You Use Your Spare String of Christmas Lights?
You can easily find a string of Christmas lights at this time of year. One year my mentor gave me the idea to put a string of lights around a bulletin board with this clever title: See Your Name in Lights. Post any type of student work and ta-da…a stellar bulletin board. The great thing about this title is that you can leave the bulletin board up after Christmas since it doesn’t actually refer to the season or to a holiday. It always makes me sad to put so much work into a bulletin board for Christmas, and then the holiday is over since we are only in school about two weeks out of December. At this particular school we didn’t have any actual bulletin boards, so this isn’t as artsy as one I have made in the past. We had to staple/push pin things into the drywall (shhh don’t tell), and the drywall doesn’t hold much. For example, you could staple little sunglasses into the wall to resemble Hollywood stars and use metallic silver border to make the lights reflect like a real sign.
Another Festive Winter Christmas Door!
My colleague is still creating envy among the ranks and giving himself more to do. Here is yet another fabulous Christmas or winter door. The paper is a little wrinkly at the top but he still created a very handsome little snowman :). Sorry, I know the picture isn’t the best quality.
More Christmas Themed Doors!
In my post yesterday, I placed a picture of my neighbor’s door at school. So many teachers admired the door that they wanted their door decorated too! With some persuasion he decorated some other teachers’ doors as well (pictured below). These photos may give you some ideas if you are feeling festive this Christmas season!
Monkey Christmas Present Door
Christmas Tree Door in Progress. Students will put ornaments on the tree to decorate it.
Clever way to make snow for a Christmas Tree–just white bulletin board paper cut along the edge.
