Your little learners are on overload during the fall and winter holiday months.  So many decorations, so much anticipation, and so many restrictions on you about what you can and cannot talk about in class.  Instead of feeling discouraged about the limitations, embrace the goodness of the season and use that to your advantage in some holiday bulletin boards.  The three ideas below are perfect for getting started.

Snowflake Fun

Use the Peanuts Snowflake Bulletin Board Set to create the background for a bulletin board designed around snowflakes and language arts.  Have students cut out their own snowflakes after discussing how no two snowflakes are alike, but that each is unique and special on its own.  On their snowflake cut-outs, ask students to write something that brings them happiness to coordinate with the bulletin board set’s saying.  What they write should be tailored to their grade level and ability.  Hang their snowflakes on the board or from fishing line from the ceiling.

Care Package Math

Cover the bulletin board with plain paper and hang page protectors filled with store and grocery ads from hooks or tacks on the board.  Give students the task of creating “Care Packages” for a local homeless shelter, servicemen and women overseas, or victims of a natural disaster.  Allow them to include whatever they would like in the packages, but the value of all of the items should not go above a certain limit (you can adjust it to $10, $15, $25, etc. depending on what makes sense for your students’ abilities).  They must then create a “Care Package Proposal” that includes a list of what to include in the care package, the price, and the justification for items.  For example, is a frozen turkey appropriate to ship to someone overseas or would it make more sense to send powdered drinks or energy bars.  If you have mutiple copies of the ads, let students cut out their care package items and attach them to their “Care Package Proposals.”

Pay It Forward

There is so much focus on “getting” during the holiday season that sometimes “giving” takes a back seat.  Use the holiday season to re-focus your students’ attention on how good it feels to give back and pay it forward.  Cover a bulletin board with plain paper and have a stack of sticky notes and a pen in a basket beneath the board.  Label the board “Pay It Forward” and encourage students to do just that during the holiday season.  If you are using the bucket filler theme in your school, this is a perfect tie-in as it focuses on doing for others while asking nothing in return.  As students “pay it forward” during the season, ask them to record their actions on sticky notes and hang them on the board.  Make it a class goal to cover the board in sticky notes before the end of the month.

Hint:  Have holiday theme sticky notes for students to write their ideas on.

What are some of your favorite holiday boards?  Share them with us below!