April is a magical month for all. Spring officially begins at the end of March, making April the first month in which we have officially escaped winter.
Flowers begin to bloom, baby animals are being born, and people start getting excited about summer!
There are so many events that take place during the month of April, and depending on the age of the children in your class, you will want to celebrate events that are relevant to their lives.
April is a busy month, with a lot happening during those 30 days.
Get creative, and use these themes to create colorful, dazzling displays on your classroom’s bulletin board!
What Events Take Place In April?
The biggest event that most children will be aware of, in the month of April, is Easter!
Whether the children are religious or not, there is no doubt that they are counting down the day until they get to eat some tasty treats.
Sometimes Easter is held in March, however, so it is important to work out which month Easter will be held during this year.
If Easter takes place in March during the year that you are reading this article, you can always add Easter themes to your March bulletin board instead.
Other important events held during the month of April include:
Earth Day
Autism Awareness Month
National Poetry Month
National Shakespeare Day
World Heritage Day
National Children’s Book Day
April Fools’ Day
There are so many events to get excited about during this month, and many of them are educational for children of all ages. Now is the time to get the children excited about poetry, literature, and the world that we live in.
April Bulletin Board Ideas
Now that we have discussed which events take place during April, you can have a think about what ideas you want to take and use to decorate your classroom’s bulletin board.
There is plenty of room to get creative with these themes, and you may even want to use more than one theme throughout the month.
In fact, you could even choose two or three of these themes and use them together: for example, National Poetry Month and National Shakespeare Day can be used together, as Shakespeare wrote many poems throughout his life.
Still stuck for ideas? Well, look no further!
Below, we have listed 15 creative, exciting ideas for you to use for your own bulletin board. Each one of these ideas are exciting, colorful, and will surely inspire the children in your classroom.
Let’s get started!
Keeping It Clean: Spring Cleaning Bulletin Board
Spring has officially begun! Although spring starts at the end of March, April is the first full month of spring that we get to enjoy. Say goodbye to cold, dark winter nights, as it is time to get excited for summer.
Spring is a time known for new beginnings, which is why many people decide to give their homes (and their lives) a ‘spring-clean’.
For a spring-cleaning themed board, you could add ideas on how the children can help their parents/guardians to clean at home!
Add little tips on how to tidy up their rooms properly, including how to sweep the floor, how to use a vacuum, and even how to safely wash the dishes.
Depending on their age, you should warn them not to wash anything sharp while doing the dishes, e.g., knives – remind them to leave these utensils for the mommies and daddies to clean!
You could use this ‘spring-cleaning’ board to add something about Earth Day, teaching the children how to recycle old waste to keep our earth clean and safe.
Riddle Me This: April Fools’ Day Bulletin Board
April Fools’ Day is held on the first day of the month, every year. This is a tricky event to navigate with children, as you don’t want to encourage them to get too creative with their pranks.
A fun way to celebrate April Fools’ Day is to fill the bulletin board with fun riddles for the children to solve.
Start with some easy riddles, for example:
Q: What gets wet before drying?
A: A towel!
You can then gradually add harder riddles throughout the board; ones that will challenge the children to think long and hard about the answer, and even encourage them to discuss with their classmates.
Here is a tricker riddle to solve:
Q: Jason’s mother has 4 children. The eldest child’s name is Monday. The second eldest is named Tuesday. The third child is named Wednesday. What is the youngest child’s name?
A: Jason!
These riddles will create discussions in your classroom, allowing the children to use their thinking skills while having fun. Add a couple of jokes too!
You could even add a new riddle/joke every day, giving the children something to look forward to each morning.
Showered With Love: April Showers Bulletin Board
Even though summer is just peeking over the horizon, spring is not over yet. In fact, it has only just begun. And everybody knows that, at the start of spring, we can experience some drizzly weather.
Create a bulletin board with a large umbrella on, and add rain drops with photographs of each child inside. You could even get the children to draw small self-portraits to add onto the raindrops.
Then, with the title ‘Showered With Love’, encourage the children to write one thing that they like about each of their classmates.
You can then pin these to the board, letting the children see which of their personal attributes their classmates appreciate about them the most.
This is a fun, nice way to show each child how much they are appreciated by their friends and peers. It is also a great way to encourage the children to be nice to each other, and ‘shower’ each other with love and appreciation.
Loving Our Earth: Earth Day Bulletin Board
On April 22nd, we celebrate Earth Day! On this date, we discuss the world around us, and how we can help save our environment.
No matter how small the children in your classroom are, they are never too young to learn about the environment. In fact, the younger they are when they learn, the better!
Use this time to teach the children different ways that they can help protect the planet.
They can do this through recycling, reducing waste, or simply using less water. You can encourage them to continue these tasks at home, as well as at school.
The children can then take part in activities such as planting trees, creating art projects, and learning about animals.
These activities can all be done outside, which will be great if the weather allows it: after all, who doesn’t love learning outside?
Nothing beats an outdoor classroom activity, and it is good for the children to get some fresh air while learning new skills.
A Poet And You Know It?: National Poetry Month Bulletin Board
April is National Poetry Month, and this should definitely be acknowledged by you and your students. Poetry is not only a fun activity, but it is a great way to get the children’s creativity flowing!
Teach your younger students about rhyming words and simple poetry techniques, such as alliterations (words that start with the same letter, e.g., slippery, slimy snakes) and onomatopoeia (words that imitate a sound, e.g., bang or crash).
You can scatter these different words across the board in bright, bold letters to catch the children’s attention.
Teach older students about the different types of poems, such as limericks. Encourage them to attempt to write their own poems, and to stick their work up on the board for everybody else to read.
You could even hold a poetry competition, asking your students to choose their favorite!
Eggcited For Easter: Easter Bulletin Board
Easter is an exciting time for children, whether they have been brought up to be religious or not.
We have included a religious Easter bulletin board idea lower down on the list, but this idea is for those who simply want to add a little color and excitement to their classroom!
For children, one of the most exciting parts of Easter is the idea of being visited by the Easter Bunny, and, of course, taking part in Easter egg hunts.
Why not consider creating a large image of the Easter Bunny on your board, and a load of colorful eggs?
Better yet, you could create your very own, daily Easter egg hunt for your students to take part in.
Hide an Easter egg in a new area of the classroom every morning, and add a riddle or a clue on the board every morning, suggesting where the egg has been hidden!
One Piece At A Time: Autism Awareness Month Bulletin Board
April is also Autism Awareness Month. This is an extremely important topic to discuss with your students, no matter how old they are.
You may be aware that some of your students are on the ASL spectrum, but some people do not get diagnosed until a lot later into their lives. This means that there may be several children in your class with undiagnosed autism.
Use this month’s bulletin board to not only make your students aware of autism, and what it is, but also that it is okay to have autism.
Teach them that everyone is different in their own ways, but having autism is not something to fear, and it is not a valid reason to treat someone differently.
The symbol often used for autism awareness is the puzzle pieces, colored in red, yellow, green, and blue.
Create a puzzle shape on the board with these colors, and ask your students about their knowledge of autism. This is a great way to get a discussion going, and to educate them on what it really means.
Who do You Think You Are?: World Heritage Day Bulletin Board
April 18th is World Heritage Day, a day on which we observe other heritages around the world, as well as our own.
Ask your students to go home and ask their parents about their heritage: if their families have originated in other regions of the world, or even other towns and cities, encourage them to study these areas and learn about them.
You could create a bulletin board with a map of the world in the middle, and then get the children to add where members of their families have come from.
It is important for children to learn about other areas of the world, and to stay in touch with their heritage!
This is a particularly important activity to take part in if there are any students in your class who are not from the area in which you teach.
Educate the other children about these different cultures, and show them that even if some people do not look the same as them, or speak the same, dress the same, etcWe are all human beings.
Travelling The Globe: Earth Day/World Heritage Day Bulletin Board
In addition to the previous entry, you can ask your students if they have ever travelled abroad on vacation.
Even if they have only travelled to another state, ask them about their experiences, and tell them to write a piece about that particular area, or draw a picture, or create a collage.
Add these creative pieces to the board – again, surrounding a map of the world – and allow the students to learn about areas of the world that they, or their classmates, have visited.
This is a great way to teach the children about different countries, cultures, and religions across the world, broadening their understanding of the world that we live in.
April Showers Bring May Flowers: April Showers/Earth Day Bulletin Board
As the old saying goes, ‘April showers bring May flowers’.
Why not take this time to teach the children about plants and flowers, and how to grow them? Use the board to explain how watering flowers will help them grow, the same as drinking water and eating food helps us grow.
Create a large, cardboard cloud with some raindrops falling down, and ask the children to draw some bright, colorful flowers to pin to the board beneath the cloud.
You could also take this opportunity to teach your students about the water cycle: how rain falls from the sky into the ocean, and then evaporates into the air to create clouds, and then repeating the cycle over and over.
Eggstra Special Birthday Wishes: Birthday Bulletin Board
Not only are there several events that take place during the month of April, but there are most likely a handful of children who will be celebrating their birthdays during this time.
It is always a good idea to put the children’s birthdays on a board, allowing them to know exactly when their friends’ birthdays are.
You could create countdowns to each child’s birthday, hyping them up with excitement for when the big day arrives!
You could add images of birthday cakes and candles, or you could use an Easter theme, placing cardboard cut-outs of eggs with the birthday girls and boys’ photographs inside.
The ‘Lit’ In Literature: National Shakespeare Day Bulletin Board
National Shakespeare Day is celebrated on April 23rd every year: this is the day that William Shakespeare was born, and the day that he died.
Depending on how old your students are, they may or may not have heard of Shakespeare and his work. Take this time to teach them!
You don’t need to go into the ins and outs of each plot and play he ever wrote, but you can explain to them that he was an incredibly important figure in history through his writing.
Add some photographs of Shakespeare to the board, and some extracts of his poems and plays for the children to read during their spare time.
Every child learns about Shakespeare at some point in school, so this is a great way to give them a head start, no matter how old they are.
Pick A Poem: National Poetry Month Bulletin Board
Returning to National Poetry Month, here is another fun idea to get the children to engage in reading and writing some poems.
Pick out some fun poems that the children will enjoy, print them out (or write them out by hand), and place them in a little pocket that you can pin to the board.
Encourage the children to pick out a random poem to take home and read.
Some fun examples of children’s poems include sections from books written by Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, and A. A. Milne.
Ready To Read?: National Children’s Book Day
National Children’s Book Day is held on April 2nd every year. This is, yet another, creative date that can be used to encourage your students to tap into their imaginations through the world of reading.
Print out a load of book covers for famous children’s books, and plaster them over your bulletin boards. You can even ask your students to name their favorite books, and add these covers to the board.
Ask them to write a short review and/or synopsis of their favorite book for their classmates to read on the board, so that they can decide if they would like to read that book or not.
You could even add your favorite book from when you were a child, and write a short review/synopsis to encourage the children to read it.
He Is Risen: Easter Bulletin Board
Lastly, we have another Easter board idea: this one, however, will delve deeper into the true meaning of Easter.
Many children are, most likely, unaware of what Easter is really about, and it is important to teach them, whether they come from religious backgrounds or not.
This is a cultural event that has resulted in us celebrating Easter many, many years later!
If the children are particularly young, you don’t need to go into as much detail about the death and gore of Jesus Christ being nailed to a cross, but explain that the Bible says that he died for our sins, and was then resurrected 3 days later.
You could add imagery of the cross on the board, along with a storyboard of what happened to Jesus Christ. This will be an interesting way for the children to truly discover what Easter is all about.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, we hope you’ve enjoyed reading this month’s bulletin board ideas. We know it can be hard to pick just a few items to display at once.
By using these ideas as inspiration, you’ll be able to create something unique 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!
