Oh teacher friend, the struggle is real! Changing out bulletin boards monthly or seasonally can take a lot of time and creative energy. I’m excited to share my secrets for keeping bulletin boards fun, fresh and purposeful while saving time too. Sound too good to be true? It isn’t! If you need bulletin board ideas keep reading.
As a busy teacher, there’s a lot on your teacher to-do list. Things like lesson planning, setting up centers, and getting ready for the week tend to take priority over a hallway display or bulletin board. And . . . all too often it just feels as if there is not enough time to do it all. Here are some of my secret bulletin board ideas for the primary classroom.
1. Make Interactive Learning Spaces
One of the easiest ways to keep bulletin boards fresh and current is to use them to create your learning space. Use a bulletin board to create your Calendar Time area, a Number of the Day space, or as an ever changing interactive anchor chart for a specific subject.
By creating multiple smaller learning spaces around the room, you can use your bulletin boards as interactive learning spaces.
Since these spaces will be used on a consistent basis, they are constantly being changed and updated. For example, every month you change out your calendar area. You add a new month header and you can change out the numbers to coordinate with each month. You can even add a couple of monthly or seasonal images and the entire board has a new feel. Instead of updating the calendar and creating a new bulletin board you now have a 2-in-1.
2. Use Student Work
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel and create or buy everything for the bulletin board yourself. This can be time-consuming and expensive! I love to use my students’ crafts and projects to decorate our bulletin boards.
There are so many great craft projects that connect to academic skills. After we complete the crafts, I hang them up on our bulletin board to decorate our room and for my students to admire their work. You can also create a catching title using letter cutouts and you have an easy bulletin board ready to go!
Here are some of my favorite crafts to use for bulletin boards and the board title I would use:
- This First Day of School Pencil Craft makes a cute bulletin board with the title “We are One Sharp Bunch”
- This Math Kite Craft is the perfect spring bulletin board. Add the title “Flying High in Kindergarten” to make a great seasonal display
- A bulletin board titled “Did You Know?” would make a great board for these animal based crafts and writing activities on Penguins, Spiders and Bees.
- These Number Flowers and Gardener Kids make a great spring display. Add the words “Look What’s Growing in our Kinder-Garden. . .”
These are just a few of the fun bulletin boards you can create using classroom activities. You can find all of the crafts we use throughout the year in my shop and get more inspiration for classroom displays too!
Crafts for the Whole Year Mega Bundle
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This MEGA bundle includes all of the crafts we use in our classroom. They brighten up our room and are fun to make. Get access to 41 of my favorite crafts so you can pick and choose which ones you want to use year after year!
All crafts include easy-to-use templates, step-by-step picture directions, as well as writing templates to incorporate writing into each lesson.
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3. Year Long Bulletin Boards
Another great bulletin board idea tip is to create a bulletin board that is useful all.year.long! This is especially helpful if you have a board that is in a hard-to-reach place. A teacher friend of mine had a very large bulletin board that was hung above the 4 foot tall cubby lockers in her classroom. To make changes a ladder was required, which would make anyone less than motivated to change it out frequently 😉 Once she started using this space for a year-long bulletin board, life got so much easier!
One of my favorite year-long bulletin board displays is for student birthdays. It is a great way to build classroom community and my students love to check who is having a birthday when we start a new month.
We also use the bulletin board at the beginning of each month to add class birthdays to our calendar and to make a birthday graph when we learn about graphing.
Some other year-long bulletin board ideas include a word or sound wall, a daily calendar, and classroom rules. To keep the classroom feeling fresh throughout the year, I limit the number of year-long bulletin boards, but just having one or two can end up saving you lots of time and headaches.
4. More Fun Displays
One of my favorite ways to display our classroom crafts and projects is by taking the display off the wall and onto a clothesline! A bulletin board or wall display often needs multiple elements: a background, border, a title, and maybe pictures. However, by moving your display to a different space you can eliminate the need for many of those things while still having a fun display!
Use hooks or string to hang student work from the ceiling. I like to use the clothes-line method and have a string that runs across the room with clothespins on it. You could also create individual hangers by attaching a clothespin or binder clip to the end. This would make for easy hanging and removal all year long. Make sure you check with your school and see that you are allowed to display from a string or wire off the ceiling. Sometimes it’s not allowed and I would hate for you to set it up, just to have to take it all down!
Another fun way to display work is by attaching clothespins or clips to colorful borders. Then you can slide your students’ work on and off really easily, no staples required!
Save Time and Still Have Amazing Bulletin Boards!
I hope that these ideas will help you save some time and energy as you create your bulletin boards this year. By simply applying one or two of these into your year you can save yourself hours of work.
Save these Easy Bulletin Board Ideas
Save these time-saving bulletin board ideas and tips to your favorite classroom Pinterest board so you can quickly come back the next time you need an easy bulletin board or classroom display.
