A quick and easy bulletin board idea to get kids excited about the concert!

October 25, 2014

Feelin’ Good! – Concert Advertising

Hula hoops and emojis… best eye-catcher for my kids ever! I’ve done a lot of different things to advertise for upcoming concerts and this is one of my new favorites! I needed something exciting that would really grab the attention of my students. I also didn’t want it to be too time consuming to create or put up on the wall. It took a little brainstorming, but I came up with a fun and easy idea that I hope to replicate and use for other concerts in the future. Thought I’d share!

I was trying to build excitement for my second and third grade concert. The show is sort of a conglomeration of songs about all sorts of feelings: feeling good, feeling happy, feeling sad, feeling angry, feeling sick, etc. I’ve pulled the songs from about 5/6 different sources and I’ve written my own script so that kids can talk in between each song to weave the whole thing together. The problem was how to display all of those emotions without getting too specific about EACH song. Here’s what I came up with.

Building the Board

I had a couple ideas right away. I knew that I wanted to include emotions through pictures of emojis. I also knew that I wanted the board to be bright and draw your eye to the important information: the date, grades involved, name of the concert. I also thought it would be fun to work with crepe paper streamers… but how to get them to all connect and make a focal point in the middle?

An “aha moment” brought me to the idea of a hula hoop and from there everything just fell together. The first thing I did was take some twine and hang the hoop with 3m hooks. I also made sure to put some twine on the bottom to anchor the hoop (otherwise it would float off the wall sort of freely). After that I took several colors of streamer, tied them to the hoop, and then stapled their other end to the side of the bulletin board.

There was a moment when I hesitated putting something so easy to rip/grab up (like the streamers or hula hoop) on the wall. Yes, the streamers could get pulled down by an ornery kindergarten kiddo. My thought was that the streamers were so quick to put up (a few quick staples on both sides) that if I have to redo some that would be just fine. I’m also not buying my streamers at Pottery Barn or anything… so if I need to go and get some more $1 streamers from Dollar Tree that won’t cause any big problems.

I added a “countdown” board next to the big bulletin board so that kids can see how many days are left before the show. I always do this. It helps kids remember and as we count down they get more excited and feel more responsibility to make sure they’re ready. Totally easy to change as well. I got smart after a year or so of doing this and instead of stapling up papers every day I just got sheet protectors and can slide in individual numbers each day.

I found these AWESOME smiley faces as digital clip art from Zip-a-dee-doo-dah Designs on Teachers Pay Teachers. There were about 20 sets to choose from and ALL FREE! I went and downloaded a ton, even though I didn’t use them all. CHECK THEM OUT HERE I printed off 20 faces in varying colors cut them out and then spaced them along the edge of the board. The smiley faces are there to show off the different emotions but are also a convenient way to hide the stapled edges of the streamers!

The finishing touch was the banner inside the hula hoop to make it look like one more huge smiley face. It totally stumbled upon this idea but I LOVE IT! So much fun when kids realize that the words make a smiley too. The words just tell kiddos the grades that are performing and the name of the concert.

Super easy, super fun, and now I’m even more excited for the program! Woohoo!