Bulletin Boards

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Home : 2002 : February : 20

Bulletin Boards
By Lori @

1. You could read some of the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling like How the Leopard Got Its Spots and then allow the children to write their own Just So Stories on animal shaped cutouts. A clever title I have see is How
the Creatures Got Their Features.
2. We have made a Keeping Quilt Bulletin Board for Patricia Polacco's Keeping Quilt. Each student designs their quilt block and then you put them together on the bulletin board.
3. For Wilma Unlimited by Kathleen Krull-- make page size running shoe shapes. I used my clip art program. I made a running shoe glyph for Wilma with pictures representing

events in her life like small green dots labled with the illnesses she had as a child, what she weighed at birth on a baby scale, calendar page minatures markded with birth and death dates, a heart for her goal in 1960 -- to win 3 Olympic Gold Medals, a cut out in the shape of Tennessee for the state where she was born, her family birth order -20th of 22 children. Each child does a running shoe glyph for themselves. I put these up around the room since they were too big for one bulletin board. We used all the information though to graph data for our class which I did put on the bulletin board for our open house -- for example range of birth weights, month with the most birthdays, etc. The shoes look neat around the top of the room -- looks like someone has run around the room. I got this idea from a book called Feisty Females.

4. I have used this with several books -- Make a matching game -- like concentration using events from the book and icons from the book. For example for The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe. I made "doors" by hanging one of those science fair boards on a bulletin board so that the ends could swing open and shut. I decorated the outside of the swinging ends so that they looked like the doors to an armoire. Inside I hung cutouts shaped like various clothes on the top rack. These "clothes" would swing aside to reveal clues about events in the book. On the bottom rack other clothes would reveal a match to the items on the top rack. I numbered my top rack and lettered the items on the bottom. Students could complete an answer sheet for extra credit points -- 1 point per correct answer. I have used the same concept with other books -- Train cars on a winding track for The Boxcar children in younger grades. A replica of a "tree house" where I would change the question cutouts each week for a 4 week Magic Tree House unit for second graders one summer. Dinosaurs for Dinosaurs before Dark, Sarcophagi for Mummies in the Morning, etc. Another one that was a hit was the Magic School bus.

4. If you have a travel book you like -- I used How to Make an Apple Pie and see the World once for younger students. I made postcards for each of the places but did not spell out the locations. I placed clues on the postcards about where I was. Each postcard was numbered. Students tried to guess where each postcard was written by the clues left in the postcard. Another fun book was Postcards from Pluto which used this idea with the planets. You would not necessary have to use the places in the book -- make it a research project where the students had to search out the locations.

5. I use Little Nino's Pizzeria to teach theme on a Pizza Party day. I have given them a Pizza Party day when I taught third grade when the students completed their Pizza on the Multiplication is a Pizza Cake bulletin board. Students get the ingredients for their pizza as they master the multiplication tables. That isn't a tie in on the front end, but you do get the literature tie in on the back end of the bulletin board. I have a post with a link to the directions for this over on the math board under a multiplication facts post.

Hope those help!
Lori