A bulletin board to promote my holiday concert!

November 28, 2014

Fiesta – Legend of the Poinsettia

Planning for my upcoming holiday program is well on its way and my bulletin board to advertise for the concert has been up a while too. Wanted to share with you all because there are one or two fun elements that you could use for this or any other holiday bulletin board!

The show that I’m doing is a Sally K. Albrecht and Jay Althouse production/mini-musical called “Fiesta! The Legend of the Poinsettia!” This show tells the Mexican folk tale of the origins of the “Flor de Navidad” or Poinsettia plant. This show is literally the most perfect program I could have ever chosen for my school. The music is fun and compelling and pretty easy to learn. The story syncs up with our school population (which is 85%+ Mexican American) and fits in with traditions and my kids know and love. We get to sing some verses in Spanish which, again, is perfect for this community. There are just enough speaking parts but not too many. There is just enough staging but not too much.

Honestly, it’s a great program. Click this link to check out the listing and hear some samples from the program on the Plank Road Publishing (Music K8) website. Here’s a little blurb from the Musick8 website:

As Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) approaches, all of the villagers celebrate the wonderful traditions of Las Posadas – from the nightly candlelit processions to the breaking of the piñata. But young Alicia is troubled, as she has no gift to present in the plaza on Christmas Eve. She learns that giving from her heart is magical, as her lowly gift blossoms into the fiery poinsettia plant.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

I didn’t have a lot of time to create this bulletin board since I was doing my best to gather up, put away, and follow up with the previous program (2nd and 3rd graders) which happened at the beginning of November. I was also busy sending notes home to parents, doing auditions, sending out scripts, working out other details, oh and did I mention that I also taught all 6 grades during this time. That’s one of the things that I don’t think administrators or other teachers understand when they think about “how much plan time those specialist teachers get.” I have so much program related stuff to do that’s sort of outside my normal scope AND I teach full-time as well. But that’s a totally different topic…

Anyway, if you look at this bulletin board compared to the last one you can see some similarities. Here’s my challenge to you, what can you do to preserve some of the work you did with the last bulletin board and still make it new? What can you do to cut down on bulletin board creation time and still make it feel fresh? This feels like one of those “Highlights” seek and find activities, but can you spot the differences?

Special Elements – Creating the Poinsettias

There are some things that I include on all bulletin boards promoting upcoming concerts. I always include the name of the show, the grades performing, the date when the concert happens, the location of the concert, and usually some sort of countdown so that kids and parents are well-aware of when this concert is happening. Then I try and make the bulletin board specific to the concert coming up. This concert centers around the poinsettia plant and Mexican traditions celebrated during “Las Posadas.” I found the piñata, guitar, and fiesta graphics in the teachers lounge at the beginning of this year in our “teacher rummage sale” where people leave things that they don’t want anymore. Easy peasey freebie!

Creating the folded poinsettia plants took a little more planning. I did a little Pinterest searching and found this awesome tutorial on making your own decorative paper poinsettia plants. The person making them was obviously making them for party decoration or for her house. I didn’t use the expensive paper or fancy extras, but I adapted the idea to fit this bulletin board, made the a little bigger, and I think it worked out pretty well. Check out her tutorial here and see the process with step-by-step pictures!

Here is a little gallery of the bulletin board itself. Another favorite element of this bulletin board is the piñata. He started out just saying one thing, but I’ve added conversation bubbles every few days. The kids like that he says something new every day or so and it helps draw attention to him, the bulletin board, and the show!

If you’re looking for some holiday inspiration for a bulletin board you can also look through the new “Favorite Carol” sets that I created. Just like the “Favorite Folk Song” sets that I’ve made, these little bulletin board/teaching kits have slides for each carol, lyrics, music, historical context, explain old vocabulary, include games or traditions, and more. Check out the previews to get a sample of what’s included!