6 Bulletin Board Hacks You NEED to Know!

hello there and welcome back to my channel if you are new here my name is michelle emerson and i love helping teachers with all things technology organization and productivity in today's video i'm gonna be sharing with you six bulletin board hacks you need to know and i'm even going to show you how to use a cricut to save yourself tons of time so while we're at it i do want to thank cricut so much for sponsoring this video and for making teachers lives much easier [Music] all right let's go ahead and jump right into it with hack number one which is to create a bulletin board bin i mean first of all i love a good alliteration but a bulletin board bin is going to allow you to store all the materials you need when it comes time to create or change out your bulletin boards which in turn is going to save you tons of time because you're not hunting around your room for all those different items some of the items i like to have in my bulletin board bin include a measuring tape a stapler some extra staples a staple remover a pair of scissors a magnet which we're gonna come back to in a second i might also put some extra background for my bulletin board or maybe border if i need that now let's quickly talk about a few of the items that i mentioned when it comes to a stapler i really like i think they're called automatic staplers i might be making that up but you put a little bit of effort and then it staples the rest of the way so this comes in handy when you're doing lots of stapling because your arms don't get sore and when it comes to a staple remover i really like these ones that have a handle they have the flat little metal piece at the end that you put under the staple and pull out i personally find these way easier to use when it comes to removing staples on a bulletin board now the reason you want a magnet is so that you can easily pick up all of the staples after you have removed them i would always just kind of throw them on the floor hey what i know i'm not the only one that does that okay so don't judge me but i didn't like having to like sweep it up afterwards or go try to find the vacuum from the custodian so having a magnet handy makes it really easy just to kind of swipe around on the floor and pick up all of those staples so this bulletin board bin is going to be perfect for the beginning of the year i always make sure that i stash it somewhere in my room or even take it home with me so that i have it handy and i can put up my bulletin boards first thing but it's also great to have throughout the year if you're going to be changing bulletin boards if you can find a volunteer to come in and take care of your bulletin boards for you you can literally hand them the bin and then they have everything that they need hack number two is to use fabric as your background let's talk about why fabric is going to be superior to paper first of all it's not going to tear or rip as easily that's always super frustrating when you tear the paper before you even get it up on your bulletin board fabric also is not going to fade the way that paper does so if you have any bulletin boards that are near windows by the end of the year when you start removing things you will see two completely different colors but with fabric it's not going to fade as quickly it will still fade a little bit like over the course of years rather than over the course of weeks also fabric is easier to store so if you are going to be taking bulletin boards down at the end of the year you can fold fabric very easily and then unfold it to put it back up whereas paper is going to get crinkly and you're going to be able to see those creases when you put it back up and if you have to change rooms at any point which happens quite often in schools having fabric is going to be a lot easier to transport and put up in a new room now i've tried a lot of different fabrics over the years and my personal favorite is actually using felt it's very thick it's very durable and you can find it in tons of solid colors which are my personal favorite because they're not quite as busy but you can also find it in different like patterns at places like walmart or jo ann's any place really that sells fabric and you can buy it by the yard for pretty cheap i transitioned from bright colored backgrounds on my bulletin boards to black and then i would put other brightly colored things on the board but i used the same black felt for six years in my classroom and even when i took it down after six years it still looked perfect hack number three is to create your own letters you can purchase like pre-made bulletin board letters that you have to punch out but if you are anything like me sometimes your strength gets the better of you when you're punching them out and they end up tearing which is never a good feeling plus you end up running out of certain letters especially like ease i never have enough e's even though they include like more ease than any other letter i still end up running out and you end up with this assortment of random letters that you never end up using like who uses an x on a bulletin board it hardly ever happens so you have to store those extra letters that you're not using but by creating your own bulletin board letters you can create only the letters you need and you can actually use your own fonts which i know as teachers we are all huge fans of plus you also can easily laminate them for durability we're gonna come back to that but i will say when i first started printing out bulletin board letters and cutting them out by hand i quickly regretted that decision because it's very time consuming so my personal favorite way to cut out letters for bulletin boards is using my cricut now if you are a teacher and you do not have a cricut can i just say you're missing out billy actually got me my first cricut my first year of teaching and it has been well used and well loved ever since now the current qriket machine i'm using is the cricut explorer 3. it can cut a hundred different materials including paper craft foam vinyl sticker paper cork and cardstock now because it can cut so many different materials not only can you use it in your classroom but you also can use it at home to personalize some of your decor or you can use it to create gifts for family and friends so it is well worth the investment plus i love how easy it is to set up and start using right away because goodness knows as teachers we do not need any more technology to learn after the past year and a half cricut design space which you actually use to create and manage your designs can be run from a desktop or mobile device so you can design from anywhere quickly and easily now as i mentioned one of my favorite ways to use my cricut is creating bulletin board letters so here's a quick step-by-step tutorial on exactly how to do that let's start with an overview of materials you do need a qriket machine i'm using the cricut explorer 3. you need a computer or device to be able to run cricut design space that's where we are actually going to create the design since these are not cricut smart materials you do need a mat i really like the light grip which is the light blue because it doesn't have as much adhesion which will make the card stock easier to remove you obviously need card stock i really like bright colored card stock but white works as well this is optional this is the spatula tool but it makes it really easy to actually get the card stock off the mat when you're done next let's start designing our letters i'm using cricut design space which is free to download and i'm going to click where it says new project this is going to open up my grid since we are creating bulletin board letters all i need is a text box just for now i'm going to type out my first letter m because i'm going to spell math i really like using cricut design space because i can use any custom font that i have downloaded on my computer so i'm going to click the arrow next to the font and i can actually filter by just system fonts these are the ones downloaded on my computer or the cricut fonts i'm going to go ahead and click system fonts so i can see previews of what all the fonts look like when it comes to picking out bulletin board letters i really like a nice chunky font that way it sticks out one of my favorites is actually called oswald i use this a lot on google slides and that way everything will match and it's a nice bold font now i'm going to move this up to the top of my grid area that way i can maximize my space and i'm gonna click and drag it so that it fills up about five inches because i want my letters to be about five inches tall because i'm going to be cutting this on a piece of eight and a half by eleven cardstock i'm envisioning that i can have my letters go out to that eight and a half mark so i'm actually gonna have like two rows of two letters in each so next to this one i'm gonna go ahead and type my a now i want my letters to stay a consistent size so i'm going to right click and choose duplicate and i'm just going to drag it underneath because again i can use up to 11 inches of space vertically i'm going to double click and then change those letters to be t h i don't need to have the letters in a perfect place because i can drag them around before i actually start cutting but that is the basics of actually getting the font on the board now i'm going to click the green make it button up here in the corner and because i'm cutting a non-smart material i'm going to be cutting my own material it is going to be on a mat i'm going to select done now i have the ability to go ahead and drag around the letters but over on the left under material size i do want to make sure i select eight and a half by eleven that way i can see the exact area that i have to work with i'm gonna go ahead and just kind of center them in that space that looks pretty good next i'm going to click continue now it's going to ask me what my base material is now if you go under popular you can see a lot of the main ones that are available you can also go to browse all materials and see the full selection but i actually add the ones that i use most frequently to my favorites and this is going to be heavy card stock so i'm going to select that i can leave the pressure at default and it's gonna give me directions but i'm gonna show you how to do it as well so i need to actually add my card stock onto the mat i do wanna make sure i line it up in the top corner so i'm gonna do the best that i can but it doesn't have to be 100 perfect because i did give myself a little bit of buffer space then i'm just going to run my fingers along to make sure that it has adhered to the mat on my cricut machine you will see the load and unload button is flashing which means it is ready i'm just going to insert my mat and i'm going to make sure it is under those little clamps on each side then i'm going to go ahead and click that load and unload button and it's going to load it into the machine and it's going to go ahead and measure my mat just make sure when you do this you do have space behind your cricut as well now you will notice that the go button is flashing so i'm going to click it and it's going to start cutting [Music] last but not least we need to remove the letters from the mat i personally really like to first remove all the extra card stock and again i'm using that spatula tool it's going to help it come off very cleanly then i'm gonna go in and remove the actual letters i'm using that spatula tool once again just to make sure it comes off and it doesn't get ripped or torn and i don't want it to get overly bent or misfigured as i'm trying to remove the letters [Music] here is the finished product now this is just regular card stock but keep in mind you can actually laminate your card stock and then cut it with your cricut that way you actually have laminated letters which are going to be more durable i just take a plain piece of card stock and laminate it then when i actually cut my letters i create a custom cut setting so that way it cuts through the laminated card stock within my favorites you will notice i have a custom material called laminated card stock if you go to browse all materials and then select material settings in the bottom left corner you can actually see the cut pressure the multi-cut and the blade type for all the different materials but you can also create your own if you scroll down and select add new material you can give it a name so for example laminated card stock click save and then you can adjust the pressure so based on my experience i like to set it to 300 and then i have it cut two times just to make sure it goes all the way through and i keep it on fine point blade and click save i'm sure there's other settings that work as well but that's the one that i always use now in addition to creating bulletin board letters i also have used my cricut to create my own teacher t-shirts which if you're like me you're obsessed with teacher t-shirts i actually just made this shirt super cute i just used a font i had on my computer and then i also used the qriket easy press 2 which if you're going to create a lot of t-shirts i highly recommend it because it makes it so much easier i'm not an iron fan never have been never will be so the easy press 2 makes it really easy to get the vinyl to actually adhere to the shirt i also love using my cricut to create like personalized mugs for my co-workers i would just cut out some vinyl with their name and attach it to a mug and i've even used it to create my own stickers which is really fun because you can customize them and make ones that fit you and your personality and your teaching style so if you are interested in grabbing your own cricut or even getting one as a gift for a friend or family member i mean billy did get me one my first year of teaching and we're now married so go ahead and use the links that are down in the description box hack number four is to line up your letters using tape so once you have created your own bulletin board letters you have to actually put them on your bulletin board and there is nothing worse than trying to get them all spaced out perfectly and you end up with like a big gap at the end or you even run out of space so then you try the hack where you put like the middle ones up first and build from there but it still ends up not spaced out correctly or you put your letters up and then you walk a few feet back and realize they are completely crooked maybe that's just me we're gonna come back to that in a second so what i love doing is actually spacing my letters out on the floor or on a table i get them exactly the way that i want them and then i use a piece of painters tape and i will put it over all of the letters i just make sure i stick it down so they all stick to it then i can pick up the painters tape and have all of the letters spaced out exactly the way i want them across that single piece of tape i do recommend measuring like the space of your board and maybe keeping like a meter stick or a yardstick so that you can make sure you don't run out of space but once all of your letters are attached to the tape you can then stick them down onto your bulletin board and then just staple those letters in place now obviously with this hack your letters could still be crooked but i do have a hack for that on your phone if you well at least iphones i don't know androids if you search measure app and then open it up down at the bottom there is a level button you can click that you can actually use your phone to make sure that the letters are level before you staple them in place so that painters tape will actually stick right to your bulletin board so it will kind of hold them there you can adjust if needed and then just staple them down but if you have commitment issues this next hack is for you hack number five is to use push pins to try out placement sometimes when you're setting up your board you have a vision in your head but once you start actually executing it it's just not turning out the way you thought it would so rather than stapling items down and then removing the staples to move the items you can actually secure them in place with push pins that way if you want to move something it's super easy just to remove the push pin and try it out in a different place not only is it going to save you time it's also going to save you staples and then you don't have to go around with the magnet afterwards to pick them all up keep in mind you can do this with your actual bulletin board background whether it's paper or fabric you can do it with border you can do it with letters or any other decor or paper items you're putting on the bulletin board hack number six is to avoid stapling non-permanent features i know this sounds similar to the last hack but it's different let me explain personally i like to make my bulletin boards as easy to change as possible because i have a very love-hate relationship with bulletin boards love the way they look hate actually changing them so i do not do like monthly themes or seasonal boards i try to create boards that i will be able to use all year long and just change out a few features so a couple of examples of bulletin boards i've had in my room i always had a math focus board where i could hang like anchor charts and vocabulary posters i had a books we've read board where i would hang up little mini covers of the books that we read and i also would have like a wonderful work display for actually showing student work now all of those bulletin boards did have permanent features that would stay up all year so for example the backgrounds the borders and the titles but they also had non-permanent features that i was going to have to change throughout the year so for example on my math focus board i would change out those mini anchor charts i would change out the vocabulary posters on the books we've read board i would be constantly adding those new covers to it and then on the wonderful work display i would obviously be changing out student papers throughout the year now i did not want to have to staple and then remove the staple from those items i would be removing throughout the year so instead of stapling them down i tried to find other ways to actually display the work so here are a few of my favorites obviously i already mentioned you can use just push pins but depending on what you're trying to display you might want to fancy it up a little bit on my math focus board i really like to use dry erase pockets so these are just a clear pocket and you're able to put a paper inside so i actually had these displayed and this is where i would slip those mini anchor charts into and it made it really easy to take them out and put new ones in at the end of every unit i've also used many pocket charts like this one from the target dollar spot because it has these little pockets where i can easily put cards in and remove them so this is great for things like vocabulary cards on my books we've red board i would actually hang string across and i just attach the string with push pins and then i used little mini clothespins to actually hook the covers to the string and then at the end of the year it made it super easy just to unhook them all and they were ready to go for the next year when it comes to displaying student work you can actually hot glue a push pin onto a clothes pin so you can push the push pin into the bulletin board but have the clothes pin to open and close so you can easily attach student work to it let's go ahead and review those six hacks hack number one is to create a bulletin board bin hack number two is to use fabric as your background hack number three is to create your own letters hack number four is to line up your letters using tape hack number five is to use push pins to try out placement and hack number six is to avoid stapling non-permanent features i really hope that this video was helpful for you if it was please give the video a thumbs up and share it out with your teacher friends who might also enjoy it while you're at it go ahead and hit that subscribe button and the notification bell so you do not miss any future videos as always thank you for watching i love you all so much don't forget to put your positive pants on and i will catch you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 33,031

Rating: 4.9412842 out of 5

Keywords: teacher, classroom, vlog, 4th grade, pocketful of primary, tips for new teachers, tips for teachers, new teacher tips, teacher tips, classroom vlog, vlogger, teacher vlog, teacher vlogger, online teaching, virtual teaching, online learning, virtual learning, michelle ferre, michelle emerson, hybrid teaching, hybrid learning, bulletin boards, hacks, classroom decor, cricut tutorial, cricut, cut bulletin board letters, how to

Id: p0ZARzWtn1I

Length: 20min 45sec (1245 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 29 2021