Birthdays: Letter Writing and Bulletin Board

I love bright and colorful displays in the classroom. I love adding fun and academic learning to anything I can. Today I'll show you my birthday bulletin board display and how I use birthdays to teach letter writing. All templates for letter writing and the bulletin board are in my Happy Birthday MEGA Pack, 53 pages for $2.

Here is my birthday board display. I get tons of compliments from parents and other staff about this board and who doesn't love compliments. It was super easy and cheap to put together too! I put the bags on either side of my projector screen. One month is dedicated to each bag and each student gets a silly straw with a paper balloon attached that I give to them on their birthday. I get all of them ready before school starts so it makes birthday days easy-peasy.

 Here is how it looks from the other side of my classroom. Bright and fun! Two of my favorite things.

I had some old silver gift bags so I just used those. You could snag some colorful ones from the dollar store too if you didn't want them all the same color. I got silly straws and tissue paper from the dollar store so all in all this project cost less than 10 dollars, plus I'll be able to use the bags and tissue paper year after year; I'll only need to get new silly straws each year and print out some more balloons. I cut out the paper balloons, wrote student names and birthdays on each straw.

Then I print and cut out the month circles and glued them to the gift bags. Last I stuffed the bags with the tissue paper and straws.

I attached the bags to the wall using about 3 thumbtacks per bag. Parents, students, and staff love this display and I do too! It's easy to make, fun to look at, and makes giving student's a little gift on their birthday  effortless.

Now onto letter writing. We have a monthly birthday party in our classroom. That is we celebrate all the September birthdays on just one day in September instead of each student's birthday. I love a good party, but I feel we'd lose too much learning time celebrating student birthday's separately and I don't feel comfortable giving them that much sugar either so we go with once a month parties. During Writer's Workshop on this day, each student chooses at least two of the birthday kids to write a letter to. We talk about all the parts of a letter (date, greeting, body, and closing) and then students write birthday letters to their friends which always turn out really sweet. I bind the letters together into a little book for the birthday kiddo. It's great practice for everyone in letter writing, plus the letter book is a great keepsake for all the students to take home. If you'd like to try this out, I've uploaded a Happy Birthday Letter Writing FREEBIE. Check it out! 

Happy Birthday Handwriting Paper FREEBIE