While I tend to stay away from bulletin boards with expiration dates, after Christmas, I wasn't ready for the department to revert back to its non-holiday self. 

. . .

And then I put all my pieces on the board and it took even MORE cutting. 

 Here's why . . .

My background paper was 18 inches too short for my board! 

No way my border could hide that much.

Urgh, why did I have paper in my closet that couldn't cover the entire area? Who knows. 

After realizing the problem, I took down my pink background paper and moved it towards the center so I had bulletin board showing on either side that needed to be covered- it was dark blue. 

To hide the dark blue, I stuck a different color than my hearts over the blue and then piled hearts on top of that.

See? 

Looks intentional, right?

Either way, super proud of myself for pulling that idea out of thin air so squirrel that away for yourself. 

 

 

 

To make the action bubbles, I cut out the shape on colored cardstock and then cut out a smaller version of the shape on regular printer paper. 

The smaller white shape was glued on top of the larger shape. 

There were 3 different shapes I used: 1 bubble cloud and 2 zig-zag-starbursty shapes. 

Here's a messy template for the 2 different sized starburst shapes. 

TEMPLATE FOR COLORED CARDSTOCK 💚 PRINT 3 

 TEMPLATE FOR WHITE PRINTER PAPER 💚 PRINT 2

If you have teen volunteers, this would be a good project for them to work on! 

But hope this helps inspire you or helps you find a direction for your bulletin board. 

This is mainly biographical but does include one page for the Tuskegee Airmen. 

I wanted to have an assortment of figures and pulled from different books we have in the library about prominent African American figures from history and contemporary. 

Here's a list of who is included:

• Jesse Owens
• Harriet Tubman
• Bessie Coleman
• Barrack Obama
• Shirley Chisholm
• Madam CJ Walker
• Muhammad Ali
• Simone Biles
• Rosa Parks
• Jason Reynolds
• Michael Jordan
• Katherine Johnson
• Thurgood Marshall
• Tuskegee Airmen
• Angela Davis
• Mae Jemison
• Martin Luther King Jr. 
• Misty Copeland
• John Lewis
• Leah Chase (this is the woman who inspired Disney's Princess and the Frog)
  
• Frederick Douglass
• Ruby Bridges
• Charles Henry Turner
• Serena Williams
• George Washington Carver
• Jackie Robinson
• Maya Angelou
• Bass Reeves

Each booklet takes about 8 (?) pages to print so it does involve using up some paper. 

Assembly: Once printed off, each page was cut along the dotted line, put in chronological order and stapled into a booklet.

If this is something you're interested in, here's the link to the PDF.

Click HERE for the LINK but keep reading for some tidbits about printing . . . 

Tidbit #1: If you can, print (1) front and back and (2) flip on the short edge

Tidbit #2: This is only relevant if you want to save paper. There will be an odd number of pages in the assembled booklet so to save paper, I made pages 15 & 16 of the PDF identical. Here's a visual to explain better what I want to say . . .

If possible, I would suggest setting a custom print of 1-14 for the exact number of booklets you need. Because PDF pages 15 & 16 will give you 2 identical booklet pages, print off half the number you need for those pages.

 While not all of these picture books were published in 2021, they are newer titles (published within the last 5 years or so) and are stand-out books based on artwork, humor, theme or general story. Here are my favorites of 2021 in no particular order!

In this one, we read the narrative non-fiction book, "Teddy: The Remarkable Tale of a President, a Cartoonist, a Toymaker and a Bear" by James Sage.This book is about how Theodore Roosevelt's refusal to shoot a captured bear led to a comic and how that comic led to a husband/wife pair creating Teddy Bears.

Honestly, this book probably falls in my top 20 books to read out loud just because it has several characters in it and also a New York accent to include. 

Songs:

We sang 2 different bear songs . . . 

If You're A Bear and You Know It

If you're a panda bear and you know it clap your paws...

If you're a polar bear and you know it show your teeth...

If you're a grizzly bear and you know it growl real loud...

If you're a black bear and you know it eat some berries... 

and then we sang

Let's Go On A Bear Hunt.

Lets go on a bear hunt

We're going to catch a big one

With Big green eyes

and a fuzzy tail

Oh lookie, -

And for this one we did. . . 

There's a gate . . .  gotta go through it

There's a rock . . . gotta climb over it

There's a river . . .  gotta swim across it

There's a log . . . gotta crawl under it

There's a cave . . . gotta go in it. 

And of course, that's where we find our bear and reverse the actions in the song all the way home.

Here's something neat

One thing I'm not sure I ever noticed or anyone else ever shared with me, it's entirely possible that without Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot that black bear, we would not have Winnie the Pooh.

Roosevelt's hunting trip happened in 1902 when he was invited by the Govenor of Mississippi to come hunt black bears on a trip. Winnie the Pooh wasn't published until 1926. The bear who inspired Winnie the Pooh, was bought by Harry Colebourn in August 1914 and that December was when Winnie went to live at the London Zoo. Sometime after that is when A.A.Milne and his son, Christopher Robin visited and named his teddy bear after Winnie, the beat at the zoo.

But it was the story about Theodore Roosevelt who inspired stuffed teddy bears and in the years following 1902, the toys became super popular.

So, it's just a thought. 

The two books in this story time are "The Great Santa Stakeout" by Betsy Bird and "Bear Stays Up For Christmas" by Karma Wilson

Action Song: Up On The Housetop

Upon on the housetop, reindeer pause (point up to ceiling)

Out jumps good old Santa Clause (jump)

Down through the chimney with lots of toys ( point down)

All for the little ones, Christmas joys (point to each other)

Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn't go? (Make Santa belly and shrug shoulders)

Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn't go? (Make Santa belly and shrug shoulders)

Up one the housetop, click, click, click (clap hands)

Down through the chimeny with good St. Nick (touch ground)

credit: Storytime Katie

Book: The Great Santa Stakeout by Betsy Bird

This was an adaption of  the "Down At The Corner Bakery Shop" poem. I don't recall where I originally stumbled across the poem, but here it is on My Montessori Journey blog.

Mine goes like this:

Over by the Christmas tree, it was getting pretty late.

There were (#) colored cookies sitting on a plate.

Along came (name), hungry for a treat,

And s/he picked the (color) one to take home and eat.

 Then, there were no more cookies to leave for Santa so the kids can bring them back up.

Poem: A Chubby Little Snowman 

A chubby little snowman

Had a carrot nose.

Along came a bunny, 

And what do you suppose?

That hungry little bunny

looking for his lunch

ate the snowman's nose

with a munch, munch, munch.

 Actions for this one include: pointing to your nose, making a bunny with 2 fingers and having it jump, pretending to eat a carrot. 

This one led into the next story well since there was a bunny in it.

Book: Bear Stays Up For Christmas

Song: Jingle Bells 

For this one, we played the song over a bluetooth speaker and rang our bells and danced to the music. Our jingle bells are attached to fabric and can be velcro-ed to your wrist.

Another option for Jingle Bells is this . . .

Song: Jingle Bells

(As you sing, clap your hands. We did this with bells around our wrists so we clapped but jingled too..)

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh, hey!

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.

Then we stopped clapping and started ringing our bells, keeping the tune.

Jingle bells real fast, jingle bells real slow, jingle bells real high, jingle bells real low.

Jingle bells to the left, jingle bells to the right, jingle bells behind your back, jingle bells in plain sight.

Stop ringing and resume clapping.

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh, hey!

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.

This is a little display I put up on an empty shelf. Nothing ground-breaking, but thought I'd drop some pictures here.

Truth be told, I haven't read all these books on display. How I wrote my blurbs was a combination of pulling from Goodreads reviews and publisher description on the title page. 

If you're curious, the font I used is called Children Book Kids Font from FontMeme.com.

 This game was designed for a Boxcar Children book spotlight but ended up being its own thing.

For this game, players align cars in order based on the symbol. So the locomotive has a yellow diamond, the next car should begin with a yellow diamond.

As you can see, the car that begins with a yellow diamond ends with a blue arrow. You would need to find the car with the blue arrow next and so on and so on.

Here's a template I made if you want to use my train cars! 

The shapes were had drawn and traced onto scraps of paper.

After I had cut my train cars and attached my shapes and wheels, I laminated these guys. 

This was because I knew I wanted to put them on the magnet board and felt they needed an extra layer of stability. 

After they were cut out from the lamination film, I just stuck some magnets on them and they were ready to go! 

This idea comes from ResLife Crafts. It was found during a google search. Here's the original.

• What is the Grinch up to?
• What does the Grinch have to be happy about? (Because he is grinning in my drawing)
• Why is the Grinch grinning?

But in the end, I went with "Tell him what you're doing this season!" because I felt like that would get me a more diverse set of answers which is what I wanted. 

 Tis the Season to be reading!

The snowflakes are white, the "Tis the...To Be" is pale tan in color.

Idea for this board came from this image I found on Pinterest . . .