December 2, 2013

Go Big or Go Home – A Bear-y Merry Holiday

When creating a bulletin board to advertise for an upcoming concert, pull out all the stops! This bulletin board advertising the show could have been boring but sometimes it pays to go BIG! I knew I needed something to go in the hallway to advertise for the show, but I was low on inspiration and crunched for time. Then I found these great and FREE items in the teachers lounge and had a blast of inspiration.

Last year my second and third grades did a musical program called A Bear-y Merry Holiday. It’s a really wonderful concert/show. John Jacobson and John Higgins created this show and is super awesome. The musical was absolutely adorable and for the show all of my students got to be a different kind of bear. One class dressed up as grizzlies, another were brown bears, another polar bears, etc.

Here’s the pitch from the listing on Music K-8: The Polar Bears are throwing a bear-y big holiday celebration at the North Pole and their guests from around the world are starting to arrive. But what is taking the Pandas so long? The wait is becoming un-bear-able! Join in the festive panda-monium when the bear-y small Pandas finally arrive in true Vaudeville style and the party begins.

Go Big or Go Home – Catch Their Eye!

The first thing that I found as a discard in the teacher’s lounge was this big pink bear. I didn’t know when I’d use it, but kept it anyway. He was big and went over top and under the bulletin board, something I’d done before and the kids had loved. They like the idea of going outside the lines of the bulletin board and I do too. I just taped those up above and below the board.

Then I added some of that fake snow fabric stuff to make the snowy hill and put on all of my words about the show (when, where, etc.). Finally, someone had put a big pillow pet type bear in the lounge to give away. Actually I think it might have been a pillow slip-cover. I’m not sure. Well, I took the bear and made it look like he was sliding down the hill. I had to staple the crap out of him, but he finally stayed up on the board. I would go back every few days and make sure he was still secure on the wall, but wow was it worth it. The kids LOVED being able to walk by and pet the bear (I didn’t discourage it because they head-over-heels loved it) and it brought a lot of attention to the show. Super fun and really not all the difficult to do mostly with free things that were being given away at the end of the year in the staff lounge.

It’s easy to create something small and to the point when advertising for an upcoming show, but sometimes it really pays to go BIG! With this bulletin board, I had kids talking for months about the bear on the wall and the fun that they had at the show. At my school we do a performance during the day for all the kids who can’t make it to the night performance of the concert. This hallway bulletin board had them all so hyped up about the show. Totally worth the effort! Here’s another blog post about thinking “Outside the Bulletin Board” to give you more ideas about going outside the lines with your hallway displays.

What are some ways that you’ve “gone big” in the past? How do you use your bulletin board space for a huge impact? Leave some comments below to share your ideas with everyone who reads this blog post.