Halloween is one of the most celebrated holidays in America and around the world. After all, who doesn’t love candy, dressing up, and having fun with friends?
If you’re a preschool or elementary school teacher, you might be wondering how you can harness your class’s excitement for Halloween and turn it into a constructive learning lesson.
One of the best ways to celebrate any holiday in your classroom is to create a themed bulletin board, and we have come up with 15 spooky bulletin board ideas you can try this Halloween!
The Friendship Web
We all want our classrooms to be safe spaces that promote kindness and friendship. So, this Halloween, why not take the opportunity to turn your bulletin board into a friendship web!
This project can be really fun, and you can get the whole class involved in making their own little spiders to represent themselves.
Then, you can put all the spiders on a spooky spider web background to symbolize interconnectedness and friendship.
Spooktacular Showcase
A bulletin board can serve the practical purpose of showcasing your class’s work, and a Halloween-themed board is no exception!
There are so many ways you could approach this bulletin board idea.
If your students’ work is displayed on typical A4-sized pieces of paper, an easy way to display them for Halloween is to back the paper on gravestones and create a spooky graveyard of creativity!
You could even use this bulletin board theme to inspire a creative writing project set in a graveyard or another Halloween-themed setting.
Batty About Learning
This is a pretty simple concept, but it’s popular because it’s decorative, easy to create, and is suitable for all age groups!
All you need to do is create a Halloween-themed background (maybe a dark blue or purple sky with a full moon and some black tree silhouettes) and fill the foreground with some paper bats and a bat-themed slogan like ‘batty about learning’.
You can get each member of your class to create one bat each and allow them to personalize their bat for a bulletin board that truly represents the unique personalities in your classroom.
Spooky Street
Turning your classroom bulletin board into a spooky street view is a great way to teach younger age groups how to count and tell the difference between odd and even numbers!
The best way to do this is to create a nighttime background and make some spooky-looking haunted houses out of colored card and paper. Each house should have a clear number.
Then, you can position all the even house numbers on one side of the street, and all the odd numbers on the other side.
Witchy Words
Expand your class’s vocabulary this Halloween with a witchy bulletin board packed with exciting words!
Again, there’s no right or wrong way to create this bulletin board – although, of course, you will want to select words based on the reading age of your class to ensure that the exercise is effective.
Examples of Halloween-themed words to use for very young age groups include ‘bat’, ‘cat’, and ‘rat’.
Progressing up the age groups, you can introduce words like ‘scream’, ‘spook’, and ‘haunt’, moving up in difficulty to ‘potion’, ‘cauldron’, and ‘witchcraft’.
Anti BOOllying
Halloween may be the scariest time of the year, but that doesn’t mean teachers should accept unfriendly behavior from students!
During a month centered around tricks and terror, remind your class of the importance of being kind with an anti-bullying (or anti-BOOllying) bulletin board!
One way to approach this is to use your bulletin board to display kind words and compliments with a spooky theme.
This will encourage students to add compassionate words to their vocabulary, both in and out of school. ‘You’re BOOtiful’ written in a ghost silhouette is a classic.
A black cat saying ‘you’re PURRfect the way you are’ or a vampire saying ‘you’re FANGtastic’ are also great choices. The possibilities are endless!
Little Monsters
If you want to give your class members the opportunity to express themselves through art this Halloween season, we recommend creating a ‘little monsters’ themed bulletin board for your classroom.
Each member of your class will have the opportunity to create their own monster.
Depending on the age group, you may need to do most of the preparation and certain craft products (like glue) may be off-limits, but you can get creative with stickers, chenille stems, googly eyes, and other art supplies.
Pumpkin Patch
Making your bulletin board into a pumpkin patch is one of the most classic bulletin board transformations for Halloween, and it’s so easy!
From making one big pumpkin to decorate your bulletin board to sticking lots of little pumpkins on the board to represent each student, you can use your bulletin board to create a sense of community in your classroom this Halloween.
Fangtastic Friends
Another potential friendship-themed Halloween bulletin board idea is ‘fangtastic friends’. This is a really fun and creative idea that allows each child to create their own vampire character to represent themselves.
The end result is a bulletin board that represents the personality of every class member, Halloween-style!
Strange Science
Halloween is the perfect time to get your class interested in science! Luckily, there are plenty of science-related themes involved in our typical idea of Halloween, so it’s an easy concept to work with.
One idea is to make your own version of Frankenstein’s Monster to take center-stage on your bulletin board and fill the rest of the board with science facts.
Or, you could have a witch stirring a cauldron surrounded by simple (and safe!) science experiments to try, like making slime or a soda-and-mentos volcano.
BOOkish Bats
Just like any other school subject, some kids love reading, while others take a little encouragement to get lost in a good book.
A bookish bats bulletin board is perfect both for children who love books and those who could benefit from being shown that reading can be fun!
There are several ways to execute this Halloween bulletin board. You could have each child in your class contribute to the board by creating their own bat, either holding a book or with a written synopsis of their own favorite book!
Alternatively, if you have a library corner in your classroom, you can simply create a bat-themed display in this area to encourage the children to visit the library!
Don’t Be Scared
Everyone associates Halloween with spooks and scares, which is why this Halloween might be an interesting opportunity to teach your class about facing their fears!
You can go about this in many ways. For example, each child could be given a Halloween-themed card (maybe in the shape of a spider, toad, or another ‘scary’ animal) to write a few sentences about a time they faced a fear of theirs.
Alternatively, you could simply decorate your bulletin board with a spooky landscape and an inspiring quote such as ‘don’t be afraid to try new things’.
Math Mummies
Math is one of those ‘love it or hate it’ subjects, but by turning your classroom bulletin board into a mummy-themed math zone, you can get your class excited about their next math lesson!
This bulletin board theme is the perfect way to display times tables and fractions in a way that children will actually find interesting.
Ghostly Gallery
Art is a subject where all children can have fun and express themselves, so if you want your class to have some fun this Halloween, why not create a ghostly gallery to display their art?
Create some ornate paper picture frames – one for each child or group of children – and let them create their own spooky artwork for the board!
You can then place the art pieces in the paper picture frames and showcase your class’s creativity all month long!
Trick Or Treat
Finally, if you have a reward chart in your classroom, it’s easy to make it Halloween-themed during the month of October.
You don’t have to give any physical rewards in the form of candy (this can be difficult for various reasons), but you could introduce candy-shaped stickers on a Halloween-themed chart with cobwebs, spiders, or any other spooky symbols you think your class would enjoy.
Obviously, we don’t suggest incorporating any ‘trick’ element into your reward system for less-than-optimal behavior, but spook-ifying your good behavior chart for Halloween can help to keep things interesting and engaging.
Final Thoughts
We hope that one of our Halloween bulletin board ideas has stood out to you! There are plenty of options to choose from, so you never have to use the same Halloween board two years in a row.
Remember to choose an idea that is suitable for your class’s age group, and try to get the children as involved as possible in the design to encourage creativity and a sense of accomplishment.
So, which Halloween bulletin board design will you choose this year?
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!
