At the beginning of Fall, the school year starts and your students come back after Summer Vacation – which means they are either super excited to return to school, or sad that the break is over.
Whether your students are excited or unhappy, you can liven up every single day of their academic school year with a fun, interesting bulletin board.
However, coming up with ideas for these Fall inspired bulletin boards can be difficult. If you are in need of some ideas and inspiration, then this is the list for you.
We have pulled together fifteen different ideas for some Fall-inspired bulletin boards that will definitely amuse your students and brighten up your classroom.
So, check out these amazing ideas and pick out your favorites!
The Colors Of Fall
Fall is held in such high esteem because of all the beautiful colors the change of the season brings.
While Spring and Summer are known for being very green and Winter for being very barren, Fall is much loved because it brings lots of browns, oranges, reds and yellows to nature and makes it very colorful.
You can use this to your advantage by making a giant Fall nature scene with lots of colors that comes with the season.
You can get your students involved in making drawings and handprint trees, as well as labels to clearly mark out which color is which, if your students are still young enough to be learning their colors.
Welcome To Our Pumpkin Patch
Kids love to see themselves represented on their classroom walls and this idea is a great way to show off their individuality and also make them feel like part of a larger team.
Start out by giving your students an outline of a pumpkin drawing and ask them to design a pumpkin jack-o-lantern that reflects who they are.
They can use any color and designs they wish, and perhaps you can even allow them to choose the medium they want to use too.
With each pumpkin, cut them out and attach your student’s name and/or a photograph of their face.
Once your students see all of their pumpkins up on your bulletin board, they will feel a part of a larger group as well as see how unique and creative they are.
They are sure to feel proud and this bulletin board will also bring a lot of color and variety to your classroom decorations.
Season Changes
Fall is the season of change so it makes sense to teach your students all about the changes that happen during Fall. Depending on your students’ ages, you can delve into the details of what happens during Fall.
For younger students, you can decorate your bulletin board with cartoon images of hibernating animals, leaves falling to the ground and the temperature dropping on a thermometer.
For older students, you can use more complicated charts including a demonstration of the tilt of the Earth, diagrams of why leaves lose their color and fall, how certain animals change and adapt to the colder weather.
Either way, you are sure to make a very educational and vibrant bulletin board for your classroom!
Who Is Hiding In The Leaves?
This idea is a fun and interactive one that encourages your students to pay attention to your bulletin board.
Decorate your bulletin board with lots of large, colored maple leaves that resemble a huge pile. However, only half-stick them on so it is possible to lift the leaf up and peer underneath it.
Under certain leaves, hide a photograph of a classmate, teacher, celebrity, fictional character – anyone you choose! This will encourage your students to try and find every person in the leaf pile on your bulletin board.
You can also change the people hiding in the leaves from time to time to keep your students on their toes.
This idea is fun and creative, but better suited for slightly older children who are less likely to try and tear the leaves off the bulletin board.
It’s Fall, Y’all!
This bulletin board idea is all about celebrating your students’ favorite things about Fall!
A lot of changes happen in fall – animals start to hibernate or change their appearance for winter, leaves change color and fall into crunchy piles on the ground, there are fun holidays like Thanksgiving and Halloween, and of course, the weather gets cooler.
To celebrate these changes, ask your students what their favorite thing about fall is and then ask them to draw them out. You can also make giant paintings of their favorite things and stick quotes from your students around it.
A few example favorite things could be jumping in leaf piles, going back to school, celebrating Halloween, dressing up warm, growing pumpkins, etc.
Represent all of these things on your bulletin board to make a colorful and exciting display that is sure to make your students very happy indeed!
Happy Thanksgiving!
A huge Fall holiday is Thanksgiving, which falls on the fourth Thursday of November. It is a day when families get together to eat delicious food and spend quality time with loved ones.
Use your bulletin board to celebrate Thanksgiving and show off some of the great foods that are eaten at Thanksgiving. Some examples include turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce, apple pie, and many other traditional dishes.
Not only that, you can set your students around the ‘table’ with portraits or photographs of their faces and pretend that it is your class’s own Thanksgiving meal! This is a great way to wish your class a happy Thanksgiving and decorate your classroom for the holiday!
Things To Be Thankful For
Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for all the positive things in our life, and it’s important to remind your students about them.
On your bulletin board, write down a list of things that you’re thankful for: family, friends, pets, health, money, opportunities, education, and more.
Then, have your students create a collage using those things they listed. They can use photos, drawings, words, stickers, anything! You can also link each student with their answer by noting their name to each quote.
Not only is this an important message to teach to your students, but it will also give them the chance to talk about themselves and represent them on the classroom bulletin board.
Not only will they have learned an important lesson about gratitude, but they will also be proud to see themselves on the classroom walls.
Harvesting Good Books
Fall is also the season of harvest which means that it is a time to collect things and share them. If you want to get your students reading more often, now is the time to do it because the colder weather will force them to stay indoors.
To combine these themes of harvest and reading, turn your bulletin board into a huge display with lots of recommended books for them to read.
You can ask your students to recommend books or research some age-appropriate examples to include on your bulletin board.
Print out their covers and titles, attach them to the board and decorate it with lots of vegetables, warm colors and fallen leaves to evoke the feeling of Fall.
This way, your students can try out some books recommended on the bulletin board and harvest a few new favorites this season.
The Origin Of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving may be a popular holiday in modern America, but it is a holiday rooted in controversial times.
You may want to talk to your students about the origin of Thanksgiving including the events that happened and discuss the poor treatment of Native Americans.
If your students are older, this would be a good opportunity to discuss with them how poorly Native Americans are still treated today and address the controversy of Thanksgiving.
Of course, with your younger students, you can just tell them the story of the first Thanksgiving between the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag.
Using your bulletin board, you can inform your students of important dates and events that inspired Thanksgiving and what the main theme of the holiday is today.
This will teach them important moments in their country’s history as well as lessons about gratitude and respecting other cultures.
Being Kind To Others
One of the many controversies around Thanksgiving is how it glosses over the horrible treatment of Native Americans by colonists, but discussing this with your students can be difficult – especially if they are very young.
A good way to address the topic is to use the opportunity to teach your students the importance of being kind to others and to treat others with respect.
This also ties in neatly with the origin of Thanksgiving and the importance of thanking others through kindness and respect.
Use your bulletin board as a checklist of all the ways your students can show their gratitude and respect to others through kindness.
This could be by thanking their parents for looking after them by completing their chores and helping out more around the home, or thanking their friends for their company and support by giving gifts or saying nice things.
You can also use your bulletin board to show the things your students should not do – like call others names or make fun of them.
This will teach them the difference between right and wrong and hopefully inspire them to continue this positive behavior throughout their lives.
This Is Halloween
Another important holiday that happens during Fall is Halloween – and this is probably one of the holidays your students look the most forward to.
To celebrate this and to get your students in the spooky mood, why not turn your bulletin board into a display that celebrates all of their favorite things about Halloween.
From ghost stories to trick or treating, make a huge collage using your students’ ideas. They can even help you out by drawing themselves dressed up in costumes, eating candy or watching their favorite Halloween films.
Use colors like purple, lime green, orange and black to evoke the Halloween spirit, or combine Fall and Halloween more clearly by setting out a scene with red leaves, black cats and cauldrons for the background.
This is sure to excite your students and perfectly exhibit the mood of Halloween ready for the celebrations.
The Monster Ball
A huge theme of Halloween is monsters and spooky things that are designed to thrill and scare your students.
This means that each of your students are sure to have their own favorite Halloween monster so why not ask them and then decorate your bulletin board to represent this.
You can throw your own ‘Monster Ball’ with all the classic monsters in attendance – vampires, werewolves, witches, ghosts, skeletons, the list goes on!
If you want to get really creative, why not take their likeness from classic Scooby-Doo villains.
This will allow you to include more creative ‘monsters’ like pirates, aliens, zombies, and a lot of very kooky and strange monsters.
Plus, these monsters won’t be scary enough to frighten your students but spooky enough to create a fun and interesting atmosphere to your classroom.
Cooking Up A Spell!
Get your students creatively thinking with this fun and interactive idea for a bulletin board!
This idea involves your students creating strange potions and spells that relate to the theme of Halloween and Fall.
Ask them to write strange recipes using crazy, Fall-themed ingredients like worms, mud, dried leaves and rotten pumpkins!
Take the recipes and attach them to your bulletin board with images of the ingredients all around them.
You can even include a giant cauldron in the middle with lots of orange leaves surrounding the border and dead tree trunks in the background to create a Fall themed yet spooky mood.
Trick Or Treat!
A huge event for Halloween is trick or treating and your students will be planning weeks in advance what costumes they want to wear and where they are going.
Why not help with their planning and get them excited for Halloween with this trick or treat themed bulletin board idea!
Have your students draw themselves in their Halloween costumes and attach the drawings to your bulletin board. You can also include the dos and don’ts’ of trick or treating, including rules like:
“Don’t talk to strangers.”
and
“Do keep with your group and guardian.”
This will help your students learn the rules of trick or treating way in advance and keep them safe when the big night comes! Plus, it allows your students to show off their creativity and their costume ideas to their friends.
Spooky Tales
If your students are a little older, then you may want to celebrate Fall by extending their creativity with writing and words.
Decorate your bulletin board with black and white paper and borders, perhaps even drawing in spiderwebs with silver pens.
Ask your students to write spooky short stories and attach some of the best up on the bulletin board. This also gives your students a great opportunity to perfect their handwriting or practice their typing skills on a keyboard.
This activity will allow them to have fun and get creative while also feeling pride once their work is up on the bulletin board for all to see.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many Fall themed bulletin board ideas that range from the changes of the season to important holidays.
There is a lot to learn in terms of history and science, plus important moral lessons and opportunities for your students to flex their creativity.
So, if you are ever stuck, check out this list for some great Fall inspired bulletin board ideas for your classroom!
Hi, my name is Helena Waters and I was a teacher for 40 years before retiring last year.
During my time as a teacher I dedicated the majority of it to making classrooms as fun as possible, with educational parties, fun activities, and low cost entertainment that made the children excited about learning.
I taught children of all ages, from preschoolers to high school students. Now, with the pandemic having uprooted everything that children once knew about school and learning, I think that the need for my ideas is bigger than ever.
That is why I created School Sparks, a place in which I can write down and share all of my ideas on how to get students excited about going to school again. I hope that you’ll find some useful within a school setting, even at home too!
