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This is a bulletin board that I have done every year since my 2nd year of teaching. And, every year, teachers, staff members, and parents pop their head into my room to tell me how much they love it!!!
This is the book that inspired the bulletin board, The Best Part of Me {M. Tingley, Wendy Ewald}. I learned about the book through a workshop I attended awhile back, and I can't for the life of me remember the name, or who lead it. But it was good. Really good.
This bulletin board is awesome for the beginning of the year. It celebrates every single child in your class. And believe me when I tell you that the kids LOOOOOVE it. They just think it's the coolest thing to pick their favorite body part. It's not a question they're asked often, or really need to think about, so they have a lot of fun. And you should see what they come up with. Their answers are funny, creative, and surprisingly deep.
I model the board just like the book. This is not a piece we edit. Whatever they write is allowed. We brainstorm using a web, they write a copy in pencil, and then I gave them a black marker and they write their final copy. I don't know what they loved more: writing in marker, or not having to make any revisions/edits to their writing!
After they write about their best part, I photograph just that part, and print it in black and white {just like the book}.
I have uploaded the planning sheet, as well the bulletin board sign to our TpT shop for FREE! The beauty of this bulletin board {and the writing assignment} is that it is meant to celebrate the students, and it doesn't need to be {nor should it be} frilly.
I do this at the end of the year, but I am considering starting next year off with this bulletin board. It's a really good one no matter when you do it!
This bulletin board really shouldn't be done without the book, which you can buy here.
Let me know if you use it! I love the feedback here, or at my TpT shop! And if you do use it, please follow my TpT shop for more {free} resources!
{If you missed the link above, click here to go to our TpT shop}
And remember, we're hosting a give-away here!! The deadline is sometime tomorrow morning! Don't forget to enter!
Give-Away Now Closed
Halle
Just wanna pop in real quick, and share our 2nd Grade Earth Day Bulletin Board that Jenna and I did with our grade partner, Erica.
We {Heart} Planet Earth
We offered this as a give-away with Sunny Days in 2nd Grade. If you missed it, you can grab it here.
And, just a reminder that I'm doing a give-away for my Miss Rumphius unit! Just leave a comment in the post below J
TGI{A}F!
Halle
We've been followers of Sunny Days for a long time, and we're so super excited to link up to her Linky Party!!
We're on Spring Break until the 15th, and we've only touched upon Earth Day so far, with lots more planned for after break. We did manage however, to throw up a 2nd Grade Hallway Bulletin Board on Earth Day. Are you required to do any other bulletin boards other than "your own"? We were somehow responsible for the main hallway bulletin board like 5 times this year!!!
Anyways, this is what we thought up. The idea isn't that original, we remember doing something similar in elementary school. But if it ain't broke, don't fix it! Plus, we cutisfied it!
Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of said bulletin board. But picture it in your mind...cute right? We know.
Please RE-USE it! In the spirit of going GREEN!
You Can Get It Here!
Hello there!
How is it April and where have we been? We've been asking those questions ourselves a lot lately. And well, we can't tell you how it's April already (this year has just flown...), but we can tell you where we've been.
We've been busy. And overwhelmed. And stressed.
And it looks like this little blog is just gonna need some more time to grow than we had originally planned.
And coincidentally enough, it's spring, and spring is a time for growth. It's also a time for spring break, which gives us time to water our little blog, and watch her bloom.
Are you still with us after all the flower analogies? If you are, we'd like to show you a Pinterest inspired Bulletin Board Halle found the time to do right before spring break. And she's in looove with it.
The idea comes from Dragonflies in First. I love so many things about this bulletin board. The frogs. The bathing suits. The books. I think I mostly love the books.
You can find the idea here. Love this blog!!!
I was so immediately taken with Dragonfly's idea, that I sprang right into action, not noticing that she made up frog templates and everything, which you can find here. That would've been so much easier. So please, should you decide you loved her bulletin board as much as I did, save yourself the trouble, and purchase the bulletin board set from her Teacher's Pay Teacher's shop. I did fudge the title a little, and changed it to "Spring into a Good Book" to make it more applicable to spring :)
This was a 2 day project for my class. The first day I handed out a large sheet of green construction paper to each student. I then made 4 tracers each of a frog body and frog head. I have 4 groups of desks, so each student in a group started off with the tracer then passed it on when they were done. (We have been using tracers/supplies like this since the beginning of the year, so they work great with them by now). I had them hold their paper length-wise for tracing. They also cut two strips of paper length-wise, then cut those in half and folded them accordion style for arms and legs.
Does that sound confusing? It looks confusing now that I look at it, but again- you're going to be using the templates from Dragonflies in First, so it doesn't matter!
Once I approved their frog bodies, they got to pick a square of scrap-book paper for the bathing suits. I didn't have any clear cut instructions or templates for them to follow. Just this wonderful piece of advice, "Just hold up the paper to your frog, and make it fit!" Those had to have been the most vague directions I've ever given to a group of 7 and 8 year olds, and you know what, like 17 out of 20 of them did perfectly fine with those instructions! I only had to help a few! (Note to self: Be much more vague with instructions in the future).
And PS, their bathing suits turned out a-feaking-dorable! Loved the one pieces. Also, loved the boys with enough guts to go with speedos over trunks. Too cute!
All but a few (those few who had trouble with the bathing suits, even after my clear-cut directions) finished their froggies in about 35 minutes. I told them that the next morning they would be making books for their froggy friends, and that they needed to make their book covers look as realistic as possible. I had pre-printed rectangles and hung mine up as an example, and they were good to go. Love this time of year…they're so much more independent!
Their book covers were out of this world, as you can see in these photos! I just was so impressed with their efforts on this project, and I let them know it! They in turn were very proud of themselves. And, they're loving all the teachers poking their heads in our classroom telling us how much they love their bulletin board.
I've said previously that I love bulletin boards that aren't particular to a certain holiday because I can keep them up longer. I'll keep this one up till probably mid-May, when I put up our End of the Year board.
Hopefully with things slowing down soon, we'll be able to take care of this little blog some more. If not, there's always next year…{isn't that a teacher's motto?}
Have a good one!
