Not only is Christmas around the corner, but so is the New Year and a bunch of other religious celebrations and holidays.
It’s a busy time of the year but also an important one to so many of your students – so why not make the month more special with a really cool bulletin board?
Take a look at the ideas down below and take your pick of your favorite one. Enjoy!
It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
Obviously, Christmas is a huge deal in December and your students are most likely very excited about their upcoming vacation time. So, why not get them even more excited with a Christmas-inspired bulletin board!
Here, you can use classic Christmas colors like red, white and green, and fill it with some of your student’s favorite Christmas symbolism and signs.
You can make a giant picture of a Christmas tree, presents with bows, reindeer and a sleigh, and a portrait of the big man himself – Santa Claus!
All I Want For Christmas
Writing to Santa Claus is a big tradition during December and why not decorate your bulletin board with all the things your students are hoping to get for Christmas?
Decorate your bulletin board with a giant Christmas tree and have your students each fill in their own drawing of a present that contains what they want for Christmas, then stick them under and around the Christmas tree.
Alternatively, you can create a giant old-time English mailbox, have each of your student’s letters folded into open envelopes and stick the envelope onto the wall.
That way, you can revisit each student’s letter to Santa and pass on the message.
What Christmas Means To You
Christmas can sometimes feel like a very materialistic time of the year, but it’s important to remember all the good that comes from that holiday feeling.
While your students are sure to be excited about getting presents, you can also teach them that Christmas is also a time to be kind and giving.
It’s a great month for thinking of others and you can center some of your lessons around how your students can help others in December.
For a bulletin board that reflects all of this, why not create a giant Christmas tree and have your students create and cut out paper baubles to ‘hang’ on the tree.
In each bauble they should write about what the meaning of Christmas is – to be kind to others, to be generous, to be thankful, to be grateful for the things they have.
This is a great way to remind your students about the true meaning of Christmas so they can remember that it is not all about great food and lots of presents.
Happy Hanukkah
Christmas is not the only religious holiday in December as this is also the month that Hanukkah takes place.
Hanukkah is an eight-day Jewish festival that is also known as the Festival of Lights. It is celebrated in lots of different ways, including lighting candles, eating foods, playing games, etc.
Teaching your students about Hanukkah is a great way to educate them about other cultures and religions beyond just Christianity and Christmas, allowing them to grow up with a deeper understanding and respect of other people.
While a lot of schools are sure to put an emphasis on Christmas, highlighting other religious holidays will broaden your student’s horizons and help them understand how everyone is different but still deserves the same respect.
Decorate your bulletin board with lots of Hanukkah iconography like candles and the menorah, the dreidel, chocolate coins like gelt, and traditional holiday clothing.
Kwanzaa
December is also the month when Kwanzaa takes place.
Kwanzaa is a seven-day celebration of African culture and heritage that starts on December 26th and ends January 1st. It was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga to celebrate black history and culture.
The name Kwanzaa means “first fruits” in Swahili and celebrates the harvest season.
There are many traditions associated with Kwanzaa including making a kumina (an offering) to one’s ancestors, celebrating family unity, and honoring elders.
To make a Kwanzaa-inspired bulletin board, you can decorate it with traditional African colors like black, red, and green.
You can make informational pieces about Kwanzaa and stick them onto your bulletin board, teach your students about black culture and celebrate great black figures in history like Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, and Nelson Mandela.
New Year, New You
At the end of December, January begins – and with it, a whole new year!
Because of this, it’s time to get your students excited about a fresh beginning and perhaps have a lesson with them where you can talk about the future with them and where they hope to be in a few months.
This can get them thinking about what their new year’s resolution will be and ask them what changes they want to make to improve themselves and their future.
To help inspire them, why not make a bulletin board with lots of ideas of achievable goals for January?
You can make cool drawings to go with each one and place them all around a giant question mark to encourage your students to think.
Such ideas for new year resolutions include saving more allowance, being kinder to others, reading a book a week, doing more chores, or doing ten jumping jacks every morning – the list goes on!
Celebrating The New Year
Get your students excited with a bright, glittery bulletin board covered with New Year iconography – fireworks, streamers, party hats, stopwatches, etc.
A huge part of New Year is seeing other countries also welcome in the New Year before it gets to the United States, so it’s like a day-long countdown we see through our TVs.
So, why not make a giant map of the world and have your students create small pictures of each capital city celebrating the New Year.
Stick them in place on the map and this can double as a geography lesson too!
Christmas Reading
Reading is fundamental and it’s important for your students to read as much as possible to engage their minds and broaden their intellect – and luckily, there are plenty of Christmas-themed stories to read!
Pick out some classic Christmas stories to read with your student and discuss the messages in each story, what they learned and how the story has inspired them.
Some great Christmas stories to cover includes How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, A Christmas Carol, and many others!
Split your bulletin board so each story has its own section and stick up thought bubbles containing what your students have learned from each story. Your students can even make drawings of their favorite characters.
The Advent Calendar
Advent calendars are a great way to get your students excited about the holidays but conventional advents contain a lot of chocolates and it’s difficult to share that with your students.
Instead, decorate your bulletin board with enough envelopes to mark each day before vacation starts and in each envelope, place a piece of paper with something written on it that can be shared with the class.
This can be a joke, a riddle, or an interesting fact.
This way, you can get your students excited about their vacation by counting down each day with something that every single kid in your class can enjoy.
Elf-ie Selfie
All kids in the US know about the Elf on the Shelf, so why not turn your students into their own elves?
Print out a copy of each classic Elf but replace the face with a portrait of each student.
Your students can then color in the rest of the elf to suit their style and taste, then you can stick up each Elfi-ie Selfie on your bulletin board.
Your students are sure to find this amusing and you will have a cheeky and fun bulletin board that involves your whole class.
Unique As A Snowflake
With December comes winter and with temperatures plummeting, your students may even be excited about some snow.
Now is the perfect time to teach them about snowflakes and how each snowflake is completely unique in its structure and design.
You can relate this back to your students and teach them that just like snowflakes, everyone has something that makes them unique.
You can decorate your bulletin board with lots of paper snowflakes and on each one, stick a note about what makes some of your students feel proud to be them and be unique.
This quirk could range from a particular hobby, talent, or physical feature – but this will teach your students to be proud of who they are and recognize that everyone is different but each deserves to be treated with kindness despite their differences.
Winter Wonderland
Sticking with the theme of winter in December, you can start to cover all the interesting things about the season and decorate your bulletin board accordingly.
You can include drawings from your students of all their favorite winter things – snow, ice skating, warm clothes, Christmas, snow days, vacation time – anything!
Decorate your bulletin board with cool colors like blue and white to evoke the feeling of winter and fill in all the spaces with your student’s drawings and thought bubbles to get them excited about the winter weather.
Team Penguins Vs Team Polar Bears
Penguins and polar bears are two of the most iconic creatures linked with Christmas, December and winter – but do your students know that they live on complete opposite ends of the world?
Polar bears live in the North Pole while most penguins like in the South Pole and will spend their lives without ever seeing the other.
You could split your bulletin board into two and show the differences between the two animals including what they eat, how they live and the issues facing their species like climate change and pollution.
This gives you the opportunity to teach your students more about the animals in our world and include keywords like ‘diet’ and ‘habitat’ to widen their vocabulary.
Lighten Up Your Day
Christmas lights can be found everywhere during December so why not decorate your bulletin board with lots of giant paper Christmas lights.
Use a different color paper for each ‘bulb’ and in each ‘bulb’ include a short note about something light and happy to ‘lighten up’ your students’ day.
This note could be a joke, a funny story, or a kind message that will make them feel good and happy. Each day, you could read out one at the beginning of class to warm your students up for the day!
Staying Warm This Winter
It can be tricky to enjoy winter because due to the cold and low temperatures, everyone can feel gloomy and glum.
So, try making a bulletin board filled with ideas on how your students can keep themselves and others warm during the winter.
You can include lots of images of people bundled up in warm clothes, messages to remember to wear a hat and gloves when going outside, to bring your pets inside during the night and make sure they have enough bedding to keep warm, a ‘menu’ of hot food and drinks they can enjoy, etc.
You can also mention how important it is to stay healthy and to wash hands to keep nasty colds and flu from ruining their Christmas vacation.
Conclusion
December is filled with great celebrations and changes that your students are sure to be excited about, so why not try and take all that and use it for inspiration to decorate your classroom.
Your December-themed bulletin board can really brighten up your student’s day and encourage them to come to class, so remember to go all out!
Have fun designing your bulletin board and if you are ever in need of a little inspiration, just revisit this list for some great ideas!
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!
