Bulletin Board Design Ideas

Create fun and colorful bulletin boards.

There are a plethora of uses for bulletin boards, ranging from the informative to the quirky. Most bulletin board design ideas can be implemented on the most limited budgets and an ounce of determination. You can enlist friends, family, coworkers, or students to help you complete the work.

Calendars

Keep people up-to-date on pending activities, events and birthdays when you design a bulletin board calendar. Print the days of the week across the top of the bulletin board, just below a sign stating the month and year. Underneath the days of the week, draw a grid. Instead of writing permanent numbers into the spaces, cut numbers from poster board or card stock so you can easily pin them in different places as needed each month. Write the names of special events on 4-inch by 6-inch index cards. These can be placed on correlating days using small amounts of adhesive putty.

Educational

Use the bulletin board as an educational tool for students. For instance, draw the solar system on one side, but leave spaces for the planets. Allow students to pull colored planets from a pocket folder hung on the other side and practice placing them in proper order in the blanks. You can also post a fact sheet on the same side as the pocket folder, listing the temperature of the sun, distance from Earth to various planets, and other scientific data.

If you teach math, use a felt backdrop instead of paper. Hang a cup to one side with felt addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division symbols. Hang another cup with several felt numbers in it. The kids can play games that demand the first number pulled be used on the left side of the math problem and the second number used on the right. The math symbol pulled can also be a surprise as the students learn to work quickly with each type of problem.

Season's Greetings

Design a bulletin board that highlights upcoming seasons. Use light blue paper to hang as your backdrop when creating a winter wonderland. Snowmen made from white paper plates can rest upon snow banks fashioned from cotton balls or pillow stuffing. Snowflakes in various shapes and sizes can be pinned against the sky to complete the board.

In autumn, use black paper as the background so that your students' jack-o-lanterns pop in orange. You can also instruct students to cut white ghosts from construction paper to hang between the pumpkins. Ideas for other seasons include spring with flowers and kites, or summer with a beach motif and sunny skies.

References

• Kim's Korner for Teacher Talk: Ideas for Bulletin Boards