Create a Fun Back-to-School Bulletin Board for Your Home School

Everyone knows that home schooling is not the same as public schooling. There are a few ideas, though, that the public schools use that can be adapted and used in a home school.

Take bulletin boards, for example.

Kids love colorful and fun bulletin board decorations. Whether your home school has a corner in the kitchen or living room or a dedicated room in your home, a bulletin board is a great way to make your home school fun.

I hung a bulletin board on a wall between my kitchen and living room. The kitchen table rests against this wall and I have a cabinet full of home schooling supplies nearby. We don't have a dedicated room for home schooling (oh how I wish!) but I call this our home school corner.

I decided to utilize my bulletin board this year by creating fun and interesting decorations to delight and encourage my kids in their studies.

I plan to change the decorations and themes regularly. I like to change out the bulletin board after the kids go to bed so it will be a surprise when they get up.

Here's how to create a fun and easy back-to-school bulletin board for your home school.

Using a desktop publishing program (such as Art Explosion or Print Shop), I printed pictures of one shirt and two dresses (for my son and two daughters). I printed them in their favorite colors - green, pink and blue then cut them out. I also wrote their names on them.

I then printed graphics of items that would relate to school: a stack of books, a jar of paint brushes, a pile of crayons, a globe, alphabet letters, a pencil, a quill pen, a magnifying glass. After printing them, I cut each one out and - using a glue stick - mounted them on various colors of construction paper. I then cut those out - cutting larger than the original graphic to leave the construction paper as a colored frame around the picture.

I created large words using the graphics program then printed them out. I used the phrase "Time to Hang Out and Learn." After cutting out each word, I mounted them on construction paper then cut them out again - leaving a colored edge around each word.

I purchased a package of miniature wooden clothes pins from the craft department at my local Walmart. Using pushpins I hung up a length of yarn as a clothesline, then using the clothespins, clipped the shirt and dresses to the line.

I stapled the words and other pictures in various locations on the bulletin board and voila! A fun back-to-school bulletin board! The kids loved it.

This bulletin board could easily be reproduced without needing a computer or a publishing or graphics program. Try your hand at drawing the items. Or get the kids involved. Have them draw their own shirt or dress and other school-related items.

I chose to do this on my own as a surprise for my kids, but it would have been a fun art project for them during school time.

Either way it's done, the "Hang out and Learn" bulletin board has been a hit around my house - both for my kids and other kids that have come to visit.