Creative Thanksgiving bulletin boards will brighten up the classroom during November and keep students focused as they look forward to the holiday break. Each bulletin board idea can be modified for a younger or older age group by requiring more or less student involvement in the preparation.
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Giving Thanks Bulletin Board
For a creative thanksgiving display, have each student decorate a cut-out of a turkey feather and label it with something they are thankful for. Each feather can be decorated with a variety of stickers, glitter and other craft items, leaving room down the middle to write the name of someone or for older students a sentence describing someone or something they are thankful for.
Turkey Time Bulletin Board
Young students enjoy making simple hand-turkeys that can make a colorful Thanksgiving display. To make a turkey, each student should trace around his or her hand on a piece of brown construction paper. The thumb should then be decorated as the turkey head. Students can then cut out tear shaped orange, yellow and red feathers to add color to tail feathers and a darker brown shape for feathers on the turkey body.
Thanksgiving Table Bulletin Board
As the class studies about the first Thanksgiving, they can put together a display of what the first thanksgiving table might have looked like. Have students color or cut out and decorate various foods that the pilgrims would have eaten during this harvest feast and decorate the display. For a fun twist, the teacher can poll the class to see which food the students would like to taste and have a feast in the class on the last day before Thanksgiving break.
Thanksgiving Myths Venn Diagram
A great way to tie the lesson into a bulletin board display is to have students work on a Venn Diagram as they learn about the various myths surrounding Thanksgiving. The display should show three sections: things that the pilgrims did that are not done today, things that the pilgrims did and are still done today, and things that the pilgrims did not do and are not done today. There are some great thanksgiving books that can help teachers with this lesson and display idea.
This Thanksgiving season get creative and spice up the classroom walls with a colorful Thanksgiving display. Utilizing class lessons and craft time will enable the displays to be more interactive and add meaning to lessons learned.
The Importance of Creative Bulletin Boards
Visual learners in your classroom will gain much knowledge from the bulletin board displays in your room. Tie a bulletin board into each unit lesson you teach to add peripheral learning to the direct instruction you provide.
Importance of Bulletin Boards
Although many teachers attempt to create bulletin board displays that are set for the entire year, creating unit displays that follow your lesson plans may in fact enhance student learning. Visual learners take in everything around them in the classroom, and often remember specifics from what they see later when taking tests. For example, a visual learner may be able to remember whether the location of written information on a single page – top, bottom, left side or right. Adding bulletin board displays that reinforce key facts and other pertinent information will be a great benefit to your visual learners.
Bulletin Board Ideas
Create a bulletin board display for the important units you teach. Although it may be difficult to come up with ideas for math displays, this may in fact be an important tool towards helping your students learn the concepts. For younger grades, create an interactive bulletin board that helps students practice their math skills. In a pre-k classroom, create an ice cream counting display. The cones stay on the board, and the scoops of ice cream each have a number. Have the students put the ice cream on the cones in order, or backwards. You can also teach skip counting with this display.
Use one bulletin board display for your Social Studies unit plan. When discussing United States History, for example, put a large map of the States up, and have students add facts to each state as they learn them. You can also add pins to the map to represent the states that different students have visited. With a little more work, you can create a trivia map where each state has a question written on it, and the students are then able to lift the state up to find the answer, or you can provide answers at the end of the unit for students to check against their own answers.
Create a display for your literature units as well, displaying information about the authors, and other trivia related to the topics of discussion. To motivate students to read in the younger grades, create a hall display of homemade kites cut from construction paper with the student’s name. Hang a piece of yarn from each kite, and have students write a summary of each book they complete on a construction paper bow to tape on their string. The students will love watching their kite fly higher and higher with all the bows.
