10 St. Patrick's Day Bulletin Board Ideas

After Valentine's Day, teachers are scrambling for St. Patrick's Day materials. Bulletin boards are must-haves in classrooms, and St. Patrick's Day bulletin board ideas aren't as easily found online as other bulletin board ideas. Here are 10 elementary classroom St. Patrick's Day bulletin board ideas to help spur your creative juices.

1. What's at the end of your rainbow? With these words as your bulletin board title, you could focus on career development or personal goals. You could represent each student with a named leprechaun. Shamrocks can be interspersed between leprechauns.

Place all randomly around the bulletin board. Make a large rainbow ending at a pot of gold. Each student has a chance to write personal goals or career objectives on gold paper representing gold coins in the pot of gold.

2. Valuable Treasure - Students are the treasure. Place names of your students on paper gold coins and stack them up in a large pot on the bulletin board. You might also add photos of each student. Names of students on gold coins or photos of students on gold coins inside pot, resemble a pot full of gold.

3. How would you spend a pot of gold? This makes a great story or essay starter. Students create elements of the bulletin board. Place completed essays on large shamrocks or have students write essays within a large shamrock shape and attach it to the bulletin board. This is a great opportunity to teach use of graphic organizers. You'll also need a word limit. Want an interactive bulletin board? This one does it.

4. Explore St. Patrick's Day - Explore the holiday and facts behind it. Your bulletin board might contain a map of Ireland surrounded by student research concerning Irish ancestry, culture, important facts, its flag, wearing of green, St. Patrick, Blarney Stone, shamrocks, leprechauns, harps, horseshoes, rainbows, and pots of gold.

5. How Green Describes Me Each student takes home a poster-board shamrock. As homework, students decorate it with magazine pictures, glued on items, anything green that describes them. They are not to show their finished shamrock to any other student. Only their name goes on the back. When you put the finished shamrocks on the bulletin board, number each shamrock. Students will have a blast trying to match names to shamrocks. You can award the student guessing the most correctly.

6. Are You Lucky? - Place a tall plant stand next to your bulletin board. On the plant stand, place a big black pot and fill it with stones pained gold. Have a rainbow ending over the pot. Make your rainbow colors out of paper horseshoes strung together. Students guess how many stones are in the pot and post name with guess on a shamrock on the bulletin board. Winner guesses closest number.

7. How St Patrick's Day Is Celebrated in Other Countries - In the United States, we often celebrate St. Patrick's Day with wearing green and eating corned beef and cabbage. But how do other countries celebrate the holiday? Use a world map and post pictures or facts around the map--using string to point to a specific country.

8. St. Patrick's Day - Placing typical St. Patrick's Day symbols around the bulletin board is one easy way to make a board, but does it teach? If you want a board that teaches, use those symbols to hold new vocabulary words or extra credit spelling words. Let students know the words will be up through St. Patrick's Day. The following day, they come down. A quiz over the words provides extra credit for those spelled correctly or defined correctly. If you'd rather give an award to the one who spells the most words correctly, you might use the quiz as a party idea.

9. St. Patrick's Day Doodle Art - Divide the classroom into cooperative teams. Assign each team one color of the rainbow. The task is to create a color of the rainbow. You provide the rainbow shape. Students make St. Patrick's Day doodle art to cover the shape. The only rule is that all doodling must be of their assigned color. When done, each team fastens rainbow part to the bulletin board. Rainbow ends in a pot of gold.

10. St. Patrick's Day Limericks - Students create limericks on shamrocks and post on bulletin board. It's creative, interactive, and it covers the bulletin board with little effort.

You can adapt several of these St. Patrick's Day bulletin board ideas for upper elementary or junior high grades. However, for older students, it's best to keep bulletin boards less cutesy and more sophisticated.

With these 10 St. Patrick's Day bulletin board ideas you should find at least one idea that sounds doable for your particular grade level or subject.