Bulletin Boards with Teamwork!

For my first actual idea post I'm sharing about some bulletin boards my team and I did. Ha! :) That's kind of funny because I am the type who does not change out bulletin boards!  Not in my room or outside of my room, unless you count adding words to the word wall or phonics patterns under their correct heading.  Outside of our rooms we don't have bulletin boards so we hotglued up clothespins to hang student work (so tehnically I change out a bulletin board when I change out their work). I can share that pic later, but I don't currently have it on my new computer (plus I'm not home yet from Christmas to get pics from my old deadbeat computer:) but I did email myself the other pictures from my phone. 

The other pictures I have are from the main hallway in my school. The first picture is from a rainforest unit my whole team did (all five of us!), we each took a different animal to learn about, but all talked about the layers of the rainforest.  

The animal my class did was the scarlet macaw.  We got the pattern for the Scarlet Macaw from an Evan-Moor book Theme Pockets: June...I think that's where we got the Blue Morpho Butterfly pattern, the wood cutter ants, and the Wooly Mouse Opossum patterns too, but the boa constrictor pattern one of us just had.  We put this up right before special person's night at our school...we also did lots of other rainforest type activities, but I'll share those later.  Everyone who passed by exclaimed how pretty our rainforest scene was and they were all kind of sad when we took it down and left a blank bare wall :(...so I decided we just HAD to do something for Thanksgiving! :)

You can't read the hands, but each student in First Grade wrote something they were thankful for on two hands.  We got a lot of moms and dads, a few were thankful for their teachers, and one was thankful for grass :).  I stole the idea from someone's blog that did this just for their classroom...I think they put it up on their door...we just spruced up the hallway. Thanks to whoever this was...I'm going to have to look back at some blogs to give proper credit.  We got lots of compliments on this too!

So, of course we had to follow up Thanksgiving with something for Christmas!  It took us a little while to think of what would work as a big scene that wouldn't be too busy (we do have 110 First Graders!)  We came up with...

We read the book Christmas Trolls by Jan Brett to get them thinking about gifts you can't buy at the store.  My class had already been doing Random Acts of Kindness during the month of December, so some of their responses were precious!  We gave them folded construction paper and let their creative juices flow making their wrapping paper for their present on the outside (the only other piece I gave them was the red bow).  On the inside we stapled in lined paper where they filled in the prompt  the best gift of all is..Voila! Lift the flap books.  When I go back to school I am going to take a picture of some of their precious responses! 

Now what is going to beautify that hallway next? Hmmm....maybe something for Valentine's Day?  Something sooner?  I can't wait to find that great idea!  I'll have to go to my trusty sources... my other addictions...Pinterest, Teachers Pay Teachers, and my favorite teacher blogs! :)

(I put pictures in today!  That's a step up!  Now what will I learn to do tomorrow ?! :)