Quick Bulletin Boards Or Door Decorations

With everything that a teacher has to do in December, one barely has time to slap up a bulletin board or door decoration,  so I’ve dreamed up some quick and easy ideas with awesome results. On party day have a parent take them down and send them home.  They make great keepsakes!  You can pick and choose which one you want to do and click on the individual links, or for your convenience, if you like them all, and want to use them as center activities, I have them in one pdf at the end of the article.  Enjoy!

Educational Connections for these ideas:  My students discuss the vocabulary word SYMBOL and we discuss what kinds of things we see in December that are symbols of Christmas.  We also discuss the colors of Christmas. Besides reinforcing the fine motor skills of cutting and gluing; I'm also working on spatial directions and placement with them. We review the various shapes of these things and as a math extension, they measure the ribbon and wrap with a ruler. We discuss and review that math vocabulary as well: length, width, height etc.

 Paper Plate Peppermints: Blow up your student’s school picture and mount it in the center of an 8” paper plate that they’ve striped with a red marker. Cover with clear cellophane that you can buy at The Dollar Store, tie with red and green curling ribbon and have your students curl with a Popsicle stick and you have these sweet treats!

Possible titles:     “___________’s class is worth a mint!” “______________ has a very sweet class!’

Button Ornaments: Offer your students a variety of colored bulbs and have them glue buttons across the stripe.  Make it a math extension by having them follow a pattern and count as they go making a specific set or group, or have them complete a math equation in their heads: 2 buttons + 3 more =’s 5 buttons.  Glue aluminum foil to the top and add their photo.  Possible titles:   “___________’s class is all decked out and cute as a button! “ “ _________________’s class is having a ball learning in ____________. (Young fives, kindergarten, 1^st grade, room 101) Click on the link for ORNAMENT PATTERNS.

Gift Wrapped: Cut rectangular pieces of tag board and have children wrap them in Christmas paper, add curling ribbon.   Blow up their school picture on the copy machine, or take a picture of them wearing a Santa hat and have them glue it to the back of the gift box.  When you’re done with the bulletin board you can send home with the children as a keepsake card.  Possible titles:    “_____________’s class is all wrapped up in learning.”  “The greatest gift is LOVE!”

Gingerbread Joy:  Run off a copy of the gingerbread man on light brown construction paper.   Take a photo of each child or enlarge their school picture.  Cut them into circles and have students glue them to the face of their gingerbread man.   Have children decorate with crayons, markers, and stickers.  Use white puffy paint for the squiggly frosting. Children can use tooth picks to dab this on if you don’t think they can handle manipulating an entire bottle. Write their name across the tummy with glitter glue, or sprinkle glitter over Elmer’s glue.   Possible titles:   “______________ has a class that’s sugar and spice and everything nice!”   “We’re so smart! We’re learning to read words like run, man, and can!”     Click on the link for a GINGERBREAD pattern.  

Cover your b. board with aluminum foil so that it looks like a giant cookie sheet, or cover 2 or 3 rectangular pieces of tag board with aluminum foil;  arrange your student gingerbread cookies on these smaller "cookie sheets" then arrange the cookie sheets in a "kitty wampus" fashion for added sparkle!  Want them to smell great? Spritz the cookies with gingerbread or cinnamon potpourri spray!

Tree-mendous Work!  Cut out a huge green pine tree from green bulletin board paper and hang it on a wall in the hallway.  Keep it simple and make it just a large triangle. Put a brown rectangle trunk on the bottom.  Using black or red die-cut letters have a caption that reads:   "__________’s class does Tree-mendous work!"   Then all month long you can hang up student work that is extra special right on the tree.  If you want it to look like you’re decorating the tree as well, have your students glue their school photo to a paper Christmas tree bulb and write their name on it.  Then when you hang up their paper, put their ornament in the corner of the paper, so that people can also see a picture of whose work it is and the tree will look like it is decorated with ornaments too!   Click on the link for an ornament master. ORNAMENTS

Click on the link to print all of the patterns. It also includes the article so things make sense.  Christmas Bulletin Board Patterns and Directions

Be sure and check out the other December Bulletin Board ideas in other blog articles too! Dear Santa Letter December Bulletin Board, Family Snowflakes,  In December I lke to...poinsettia

I hope you found something useful here that will be a time saver for you! I wish you a peaceful month filled with lots of happy moments.  As always, if you have a cute bulletin board, I’d love to hear from you.  diane@teachwithme.com

Bless You!