Create seasonal bulletin boards that are valuable teaching tools.
As well as making the classroom more inviting, seasonal bulletin boards can teach about favorite authors, focus on a specific math or literacy concept, incorporate word walls or emphasize a science investigation.
Rather than using pre purchased bulletin board cutouts, try involving your students as you build colorful displays that not only look great but are also reinforce math or science concepts.
Use seasonal colors, sentence strips and make creating a seasonal bulletin board a whole class experience, rather than another teacher chore.
Time saver – Involve your students
Spring Counting Bulletin Board Activity
Read “Peck, Peck, Peck” by Aileen Fisher
Peck, peck, peck on the warm brown egg
Out comes a neck, out comes a leg
How does a chick that’s not been about
Discover the trick of how to get out?
In the sample Spring counting bulletin board, each student:
- made a chick (cotton ball painted yellow, toothpick legs)
- mount the chick on a spring, pastel colored background
- chose a number from 1 – 13 from a pile on the table
- handed their chick and number to the teacher to staple when their number was called
The students count the chicks as a group and then use a pointer to count the chicks during center time. More seasonal bulletin boards…
Student participation bulletin board
Pre bulletin board activity:
- Have each child take a clipboard, a darker felt marker and paper and wander a specific area of the school playground, looking for one plant to draw. If this is not possible, read a book on, “what is a plant?”, then ask them to pick one and draw it.
- Prompt the children to draw their plants as big as their papers.
- After the children return to class they can color their drawings with crayons and then cut out the plant.
Bulletin board “Plants In Our Schoolyard” classification activity:
- Have a bulletin board set up with a sentence strip at the top, “Plants In Our Schoolyard”.
- Have each child display their drawing on the chalkboard with magnets or sticky tack.
- Talk about the different plants. Are they trees, bushes, flowers, …?
- Move the pictures into groups as you talk about them. (You could also use hoola hoops on the carpet to do this if it is easier).
- Print headings on sentence strips as the students help, by sounding out which letter comes next. These plants are bushes. These plants are flowers. These plants are trees…..
- Staple the headings on the bulletin board.
- Have each child take their drawing off the chalkboard and help them staple it under the correct heading on the bulletin board.
- Count how many plants in each group.
- Print the number and staple it beside the group.
- Count how many plants all together.
Sorting and classification activities also help build math vocabulary and skills. Teach math skills with these geometry games…