Pirate Bulletin Board

With this pirate-themed bulletin board idea, decorating your classroom for the new school year is much easier than swabbing the deck. We’ll show you how to make this display (it’s so easy!) and offer a few alternatives to customize it for your classroom.

How We Did It

We set the scene with an ocean background decoration and added red border trim for extra color. For the pirate ship, we used a jointed cutout party decoration and positioned it to “sail” on the ocean background. Self-adhesive foam letters in two different sizes made it easy for us to spell out “Ahoy Class-Mateys! Check out the 4th grade crew!” and “Arrrrg!”

The class loved creating their own pirate hats, and this can be an excellent project for the first day of school. We cut out hat shapes from black foam and let the students decorate them with self-adhesive jewels, plastic coins, self-adhesive pirate shapes and other embellishments.

Make It Your Own!

You can follow our instructions exactly or mix it up with these creative alternatives:

•    To make your own ocean background, crinkle some transparent blue plastic wrap and staple it to the bulletin board for water, and use sheets of light blue construction paper for the sky. If you’d like to add clouds, try cotton balls!

•    You could try many alternatives for the pirate ship. Wooden craft sticks or cardboard work well for the ship’s body, and cardboard tubes or wooden dowels make ideal masts. For the sails themselves, you can use old sheets or t-shirts cut to fit. Just remember to make holes and rips for an authentic buccaneer look!

•    For the pirate hats, you can use black construction paper instead of foam. Students can also use glitter, paint or even pennies for even more ways to get creative.

•    If you’d like to use a different saying for your bulletin board, here’s a few more ideas, all with a swashbuckling twist:

o    Set sail with the first grade crew!
o    Ready for a high seas school year?
o    Treasure the fourth grade, buccaneers!

One it’s time for this theme to set sail, you can update your bulletin board with a fun new beach theme.