Depending on where you live, outside time can become more and more limited. To beat the cabin fever, prep a few activities to have on hand for rainy day recess, days when it is too cold or just for fun. If you know me, you know that I love a good bulletin board and craft, so here are some winter bulletin board ideas and activities.
Start Your Winter Activity With A Read Aloud
The perfect start to ANY activity is a fun read aloud. Choose a story that relates to the topic at hand and let the students ask questions before, during and after. A great story to read is The Shortest Day: Celebrating The Winter Solstice. This is a fantastic story to read during winter and before a sweater craft!
You can purchase the book from Amazon HERE!
Have Students Craft Their Winter Sweater Activity
Kids love creating crafts with their faces on them! They love seeing their own smiling faces hung around the room, bringing a little more cheer. You can have your students complete these sweater weather crafts with or without their custom faces. To add their faces, just take a picture of each child and print onto white paper. Cut out their faces and glue them to the top of the sweater. You can print the sweaters and bows onto colored cardstock or let students decorate their own. I let the kids choose where to place the bow (on the head or around the neck).
It’s always fun to see the customized colors and patterns of the sweaters hanging on the wall when the activity is complete.
Once the Winter Sweater Activity is Complete, Construct Your Winter Bulletin Board
Putting the bulletin board together is simple! If you have used my bulletin board kits before, you know they come with everything you need to complete the project.
Print the SWEATER WEATHER wording to hang at the top of the bulletin board display. Use the included decorative banner pennants, variety of printable borders and bottom border pieces to customize your display. You can even let the kids help you decide where to place the objects!
Encourages A Strong Classroom Community
Letting the students customize their sweaters and help with the bulletin board assembly gives them a sense of inclusion and community. Especially over the holidays, the students will love seeing their smiling faces on the walls of the classroom. Students spend a majority of their days at school, so I like to make ours as welcoming and full of love as possible. You never know which little hearts you’ll be touching when you do a classroom community bulletin board like this.
Other Fun Winter Classroom Activities & Tools
During the different seasons, I like to switch up my daily slides and newsletters to draw the eye and make teaching a little more interesting. I created these winter themed slides to use during morning meeting, as exit tickets or daily reminders. The slides can be used in Powerpoint or Google Slides formats.
Parents also love receiving adorable printouts, like these winter newsletters. I find that sending home a colorful sheet of paper gets them to read the information more than a plain sheet of paper. Use these fun winter newsletters to share information with parents and guardians at home. There are spaces for learning targets, vocabulary or sight words, reminders, important dates and contact information.
If you enjoyed these winter bulletin board ideas, I have a bulletin board bundle – at a discounted rate. You can get them all here:
You can find the resources mentioned above right here:
If you like the resources mentioned in this post, you may also like:
- A Fun Gingerbread Craft & The “Sweetest” Ideas for Christmas Bulletin Boards
- Creative Classroom Ideas You May Have Never Seen Before (But Need To Know About!)
- Simple Tips for Time Management For Teachers That Will Make Life So Much Easier
