Ideas! By ConnieWI

Go to the archives above and type in "medieval," "castle," or "Middle Ages." You will definitely get some ideas.

A kindergarten teacher in my building used "The Kingdom of Kindergarten" on her door with a castle made

of felt and then mounted on felt. The large felt almost covered the ouside of her door and was shaped like a tall banner with a V cut at the bottom and a rod at the top. The letters were cut from felt too and glued on the banner...fringe along the top, sides, and bottom...and crowns for each child's name. She bought silver and gold paper used for scrapbooking, traced the crowns on the

back, laminated them, and then added gems and things that sparkled to them. She pinned the crowns to the banner. She went so far as to have the kids call her Queen (her last name) and she called them Prince/Princess (their first name). They loved it!

Her birthday board had crowns for the boys and tiaras for the girls. On their birthday or half-birthday (for summer birthdays), the kids wore a crown or tiara for the day.

She had a bulletin board called "The Serf Board" for her jobs. Early in the year, she dressed each child in a royal cape and crown and took their picture. She enlarged them and used these on the student of the week board..."Proud as a Peacock."

At Halloween, the whole class dressed as prince and princesses... that was very cute!

My school did this theme several years ago. I made a wizard with a magic wand with crepe paper at the end and stars for student names for the door. Another teacher made small coat of arms for each child, but I bet your kindergarteners would not understand this decoration. Other decorations in my classroom included knights, princesses, princes, frogs, a castle, a horse with all the colorful decorations, a peacock, and a dragon. My kids each made coat of arms for classroom decorations too and I made several banners from felt.

At Michaels, a craft store, I found scrapbooking stickers of the above items. I made a copy on the copy machine and then made an overhead so I could enlarge them. My kids loved the dragon. Of course, we read fairy tales every day for the first month of school. I teach third grade, so we ended up doing many compare/contrasts, Venn diagrams, story mappings, etc.

Coloring books...they are cheap...work great too for getting ideas and patterns for bulletin boards. A Medieval Feast by Aliki has great illustrations that would give you a "flavor" of colors and ideas.

Books I found helpful and was able to enlarge on my overhead for my displays included:
Wizards and Dragons: Stained Glass Coloring Book by Eric Gottesmanm, published by Dover Publications
Design Your Own Coat of Arms: An Introduction to Heraldry by Rosemary A. Chorzempa, published by Dover Publications
Medieval Times: Activity Book by Linda Milliken, published by Edupress, Inc.
Color and Learn: Medieval Times, published by Edupress, Inc.
Hands-On History: Middle Ages by Susan K. Gaylord, published by Scholastic
Coat of Arms by Datherine Daly-Weir, published by Grosset and Dunlap

I also suggest you try your local party story. I bet they would have Snow White or Cinderella items for girl's birthday parties. Have you tried Oriental Trading Company?

One of the teachers in my building used colorful penants and hung colorful material from the ceiling...draped it and it was very neat.

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