38 Fall Bulletin Board Ideas for School: From Easy to Extravagant

Apple picking, pumpkin patches, vivid leaves, cozy holidays — it must be fall! Bring the beauty and serenity of autumn into the classroom when you set up fall bulletin boards in the classroom or anywhere in your school. From celebrating autumn heritage months to finding the perfect book, these fall bulletin board ideas and resources help you harvest the bounty of this special time of year.

Elementary Fall Bulletin Board Ideas

Add warmth to your back-to-school bulletin board ideas when you use fall themes to welcome students into class. These easy fall bulletin board ideas for elementary school make students feel right at home.

Feature an autumn wonderland in the classroom

There’s nothing like strolling through a harvest festival or pumpkin patch in the fall! Bring that feeling to your classroom with fall bulletin board ideas that evoke an autumn wonderland for you and your students.

• Sweet to the Core: Have students complete colorful apple art projects to display in the first week of the school year.
• Fall Into Learning: Create red, yellow, and orange leaves out of student handprints in paint, and attach them to a large paper tree on the bulletin board.
• Pick of the Patch: Start a harvest-themed unit with pumpkin activities that make your classroom look like a pumpkin patch.
• Nuts About Fall: Attach student photos to acorn-shaped backing pages, and include cutouts of woodland animals and trees.

Fall Bulletin Board Kit or Door Decor with Autumn Leaves Be-Leaf In Yourself
By Pretty Meets Functional
Grades: Any

Encourage students to “be-leaf” in themselves with a beautiful bulletin board or door decor kit for any grade level. The resource focuses on growth mindset and includes printable fall bulletin board borders, letters, images, and bunting. It’s a great way to welcome students back to school, and ideal to leave up all through the fall season.

Set up fall bulletin boards to celebrate autumn holidays

Between Halloween art projects and Thanksgiving gratitude activities, you’ll find lots of reasons to celebrate this fall. Create a bulletin board that features meaningful holiday themes and your students’ beautiful fall work.

• Honoring Indigenous Peoples: Have students decorate a classroom bulletin board with symbols, images, and reflections of a unit on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
• Spooky and Cute: Add adorable Halloween characters like black cats and smiling ghosts to a Halloween art bulletin board.
• Giving Thanks: Display a paper cornucopia with different vegetables to show what students are grateful for.
• Recordar es vivir: Have students color or paint sugar skulls to add to a colorful classroom or hallway bulletin board commemorating Día de Los Muertos.

Thanksgiving Craft Activity Art Activities | Fall Bulletin Board | Hot Chocolate
Miss McRaes Teaching Tales – Beka McRae
Grades: PreK-6th

Fall holidays are a cozy time of year, and this bulletin board brings that coziness right into your classroom! After a lesson on the meaning of gratitude, students create Gratitude Mugs, with fluffy marshmallows indicating what they’re grateful for in their lives. It’s perfect for Thanksgiving and any other holiday in the fall or winter season.

Honor students’ culture during Hispanic Heritage Month

Are you planning Hispanic Heritage Month activities for the months of September and October? Augment your unit by decorating your classroom with the bright colors and resilient symbols of Hispanic culture. 

• Unidos, Somos Más: Create a bulletin board that features the flags of all Hispanic countries around the world, colored or painted by students.
• Paint Your Own Reality: After a lesson on Frida Kahlo, have students create artwork in her style and display it on a vivid bulletin board, complete with paper flowers.
• ¡Bienvenidos! Welcome students to the classroom with a back-to-school-themed bulletin board that features Spanish and English greetings.
• Hispanic Heroes in History: Print portraits of important figures in Hispanic heritage and have students choose one to learn more about, or have them create their own portraits of each person.

Hispanic Heritage Month Bulletin Board Project Activities – Poster Reports
By Real Life in the Classroom
Grades: 1st-6th
Subjects: Social Studies, Writing
Standards: CCSS CCRA.W.4, W.6, W.7

This CCSS-aligned resource celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month in elementary classrooms with a creative pennant research report project. Posters feature pictures of prominent Hispanic figures, including Frida Kahlo, Lionel Messi, and Lin Manuel Miranda, alongside space for students to write their completed report. 

Score a teacher touchdown with football-themed bulletin boards

Fall-themed bulletin boards include fall sports, too! Incorporate football activities into the fall activities for kids you’ve planned, and find special ways to display their winning work.

• Welcome to the Team: Create a football-roster-themed bulletin board for the first day of school with each student’s picture and name.
• Time to Tackle Our Goals: In the first few weeks of school, have students write or illustrate what they’d like to accomplish this year, and display them on a paper football field.
• Keeping Our Eye on the Ball: Measure students’ progress in math or reading with paper footballs that move through different lessons on the board.
• Learning Touchdowns: On football printout backings, staple exemplary work onto the board to inspire students throughout the fall season.

September Fall Math Crafts Football Owl Bulletin Board Activities Back to School
By Jana Guerra – We Heart Teaching
Grades: 1st-3rd
Subject: Math

Use this football-themed bulletin board activity to celebrate the season in style! Students review math operations on football, owl, and acorn printables that make your classroom feel just like fall.

Fall Bulletin Board Ideas for Middle and High School

Just because middle and high schoolers move from class to class doesn’t mean those classes can’t be decorated! Feature your unit goals and themes with your classroom décor, and find ways to showcase your older students’ stellar accomplishments in the fall season.

Commemorate Native American Heritage Month with classroom boards

Ideal for social studies, ELA, or any other relevant class, these fall bulletin board ideas incorporate the themes of Native American Heritage Month with the research that students conduct on Indigenous peoples of North America. You can also decorate your school hallways to celebrate this important month as a school.

• Indigenous Innovation: In science or social studies, create bulletin boards that feature student research on important scientific breakthroughs that began with Indigenous communities (such as agricultural advancements or natural medicines).
• A Day in the Life: Have students work together on a classwide bulletin board that depicts a shelter and home life of a Native American family.
• Keeping the Spirit Alive: After students research a prominent member of a Native American tribe from the past or present, have them create posters of that person’s legacy in American culture.
• A Portrait of Many Colors: In an art or social studies class, display images of tribal patterns on baskets, blankets, clothing, and other items from a local Native American tribe.

Native American Heritage Month Bulletin Board Fall Posters & Activities November
By The Creative Classroom
Grades: 5th-11th
Subjects: English Language Arts, Writing
Standards: CCSS.W.6.2, W.7.2, W.8.2

Augment your social studies unit on Indigenous people and Native Americans with a Native American Heritage Month bulletin board project. The CCSS-aligned resource includes editable biographies, posters to display for a gallery walk in the classroom, bell ringers, quotes of the week, and more.

Use middle and high school bulletin boards to promote mental health

Surround students with positive thoughts and important resources as they adjust to the new school year, and possibly a new school. Set up these fall bulletin boards in health class or in hallways to ensure that students know where to turn if they need additional support this season.

• Positive Affirmations: Post your favorite positive affirmations to help students during difficult moments in any class (or have students add their own).
• The 5 C’s: Display the 5 C’s of mental health (Competence, Confidence, Connection, Character, and Caring) on a bulletin board with short definitions for each one.
• Reach Out: Attach a stack of sticky notes or note cards to a bulletin board and invite students to write notes to their teacher if they need to reach out.
• Red Flags: On a class or hallway bulletin board, attach a series of paper red flags with signs that someone may be struggling with their mental health.

Interactive Bulletin Board EDITABLE | Community Building, SEL & Mental Health
By etiQit
Grades: 6th-9th
Subject: Classroom Community

This fall-themed SEL bulletin board set includes everything you need to start the school year in a healthy way. With beautiful photos of autumn images and editable captions that challenge students to act kindly in their community, this resource is an excellent option for a hallway or main quad display during the fall season.

‘Fall’ into a good book with literary bulletin boards

Want to spend the fall season curled up with a good book? Share that feeling with fall bulletin board ideas to help ELA students or library visitors discover their new favorite novel. 

• Fall Favorites: Have librarians or student volunteers add their favorite “cozy reading” choices as falling leaves on a library bulletin board.
• The Hero’s Journey: Set up an ELA class bulletin board that shows the Hero’s Journey against an autumn background.
• Vocabulary Vine: Add paper pumpkins with weekly vocabulary words or literary elements to a paper pumpkin vine.
• Autumn Quotes: Choose quotes from literature that detail the beauty of the fall season, and display them on a hallway bulletin board.

Boo-tiful bulletin boards for the Halloween season

Get students excited about October 31st with all things scary! From Halloween math activities to stories about students’ favorite monsters, these bulletin board ideas are a festive way to make your classroom feel like fall.

• Eerie Edgar: Create a bulletin board featuring quotes and paper images associated with Edgar Allan Poe (such as a raven, a cemetery, or a heart).
• Something’s Brewing: In a science or chemistry class, set up a bulletin board featuring a witch’s cauldron with different chemicals being added to the brew.
• Haunting Memories: Assign a writing prompt to students that relates to haunting (such as “An embarrassing moment that haunts me” or “Are ghosts real?”) and display on a board with a paper haunted house and ghosts.
• Scary Stories: Add images of famous Halloween monsters, including Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Headless Horseman, and book covers of the stories where they originated onto a literature bulletin board.

Fall into seasonal success with themed bulletin boards

Fall bulletin board ideas aren’t just about pumpkin spice and autumn leaves (although they are about those, too!). These bulletin board resources for autumn welcome students and their families into a new school year and highlight what they can expect to learn and experience. And once the weather turns cold, you can transition your fall bulletin boards into winter wonderlands for the classroom!