Back to School and Fall Bulletin Boards

Below are some beginning of the year and fall bulletin board ideas. Some of these are from my classroom and some items are from Tracey and Rebecca's rooms.  Some ideas are original and some were seen on Pinterest and adapted for our classrooms. 

  This was my door for the beginning of the year.  I started my school year with five students

 

In September we did a mini-unit on Apples.  Projects pictures and freebies for this unit coming soon.

Rebecca starts her school year with a camping theme.  Each student name is written on an ant, this is how she keeps track of attendance, hot lunch, and when students are out of the classroom.  Next to her attendance board she has her behavior clip chart.  Click here to get a better picture and information to purchase this clip chart. 

Writer's workshop

                                                          Tracey's hallway decorations.

 

A fun fall door.

 

Math Workshop Centers

No wasted space in this room, this is a mini-bulletin board on the side of a book shelf.

This is the bulletin board I used to help remind my students of behavior expectations in the classroom. I have my students for multiple years, this is a great way to assess what they remember after the long summer.  The post-it notes are all the different ways students remember how to be successful in the classroom.   The chef is from www.djinkers.com.  Most of my bulletin board sets are DJ Inkers.

We started our school year off reading all the books from the series If you Give a Mouse a Cookie.  After reading these books we do a text to self project.  We read If you Take a Mouse to School and then students wrote sentences about what they enjoy doing at school.  After writing their sentences each student drew a picture of themselves at school.

This is my "Do Now Board" (you can visit the TPT store and download this for free).  This board was created to give my students visual reminders of their morning and afternoon responsibilities.  Each morning students check this board to see what they need to do.  Next to their name I will place a post-it note with any more work or special things they need to do.  This is the first thing students see when they walk into my room in the morning.  As soon as we have a more established daily routine, I will be adding responsibilities to the afternoon side.

My door for the month of October.  Each student created their monster out of construction paper and then wrote a paragraph to describe their monster.

Above are Rebecca's fall hallway decorations.   Each candy corn had Halloween words on them in alphabetical order.  The pumpkins above the locker are focused on place value.

All things glitter!!!!

What elementary teacher doesn't like glitter?!  It is a must love in my classroom.  I use glitter every chance I get.  My students also share my love and excitement for glitter (or they are really good at humoring me!).  On my purchase order for school this year, I had ordered four pounds of new glitter. This may not seem like a lot, but I already had a few pounds worth of glitter in my classroom.  I have every kind of glitter possible!  This school year we have done three separate projects using glitter. 

In September,  we made these glitter apples to decorate our lockers.  We spent a few days studying facts about apples, completed some writings, and made giant apples to hang from our classroom.

The first week of October, we made leaves to celebrate the fall season and help to decorate our welcome area in the office.

 My favorite is the teeny tiny leaf on the left....yes that is a leaf.  The little guy who made that tried his hardest (despite his fine motor difficulties) and he was so proud of that leaf, I couldn't have him redo it.  After all, it was his leaf!

However, my favorite glitter project was created today!  Today my class made giant witch hats, using tons and tons of glitter.  This was a very fun project, and the kids absolutely loved it.

 One of my very talented aides, drew the outlines of the hats from a piece of DJ Inkers clipart,  To save us on time (because there were several steps) I had my aides pre-cut the hats and the spiders for the students.  The students did all the gluing and stuffed the hats themselves.  We completed this project in steps (allowing us to take a break from our bi-weekly progress monitoring and for the modge podge and glitter to dry), taking us most of the day to complete.

 We started by each student glittering their spiders.  They each got three and got to pick which colors they wanted to use. 

 Tip:  If we will be using a large amount of glue I cover my tables with vinyl table cloths.  After the glue dries, you can just peel it off the table cloth.  Plus, after you do the glue project you can just remove the table cloth and the table is ready to use.  No more spending time scrubbing glue off the table!  

 I had my aides draw the outline of where the glitter would go. 

 Again, we used modge-podge instead of glue.  These hats were completely dry in 20 minutes.

 Never waste glitter!  After we have done a glitter project, I will take all the left over glitter and mix into one bottle.  This allows the glitter to be reused as a multi-color glitter.

 We hung them from the white boards to dry, while we completed progress monitoring in math. 

 One of my students had the idea to add cob webs to the top of the hats.  I thought it was the perfect touch. 

When I was in elementary school we always had a Halloween parade and at the end of the parade had a school wide sing-a-long.  My favorite part was singing a song called "Witches Brew".  This was a memory that has always stuck with me, and it is now a tradition with my students.  Each year on October 1st, I get out my witch hat and teach my students "Witches Brew".  My students love it and it is a great way to get the kids moving around the room.  This song, my love for Halloween, and my OBSESSION with glitter,  inspired me to create today's art project.  

Modeling our new witch hats!!!