Theme - Circus Theme

A Circus Theme will be fun because you can do so many different things with it... What comes to mind is animals, trains, acrobats, clowns, circus snacks like cotton candy and hot dogs, and balloons. Here are some ideas that I came up with:

Opening Day: If you mail out back to school welcome letters or have a before school open house, design a ticket for the circus for your classroom. Give students a "ticket" to the circus with your name and room number, starting time, first day of school, etc.

Welcome Bulletin Board: Make a big red/white carton and giant peanuts spilling out, put a big clown and the title "Ms./Mr. ______ is nuts about his/her new students!" Put one child's name on each peanut. OR Make giant popcorn pieces out of yellow/white paper and write "Look who's popping into Ms. ____'s class!"

Classroom Jobs: A clown juggling, put each job on a different ball and rotate student names through the jobs by putting their name on a small tag. "JUGGLING JOBS!"

Reading Corner: Use red and white material,
wrap the ends around a small embroidery hoop, hang this hoop from the ceiling and drape the material down over the corner. Put a sign that says "Reading is Fun Under the Big Top!"

Student of the week/month board: Put up a picture of a funny circus animal flying on a trapeze and put the title "LOOK WHOSE FYLING HIGH IN Ms./Mr. _____'s CLASS"

Good Work Board: Put up a big lion that says "SOME WORK TO ROARRRR ABOUT!" or "NO LION, THIS IS GREAT WORK!"

Student nametags: Print out various circus animals from clip-art and put the kids names on them. I printed mine on cardstock this year and laminated and they lasted nearly 3/4 of the school year.

Behavior Management: Put up a big bulletin board with several different "Rings." Give each student their own paper clown and they can move them to the various rings for each infraction. "WE DON'T CLOWN AROUND!" or Put up a seal for each student and make it their goal to see how many small paper balls they can earn to balance on their seals noses. This could be a long term goal board or put three to five to use daily. For a class goal, put up a circus train by making small cars taped to the wall, student must earn animals for the train, when it's full, a class reward is given.

Word Wall: Cut out and laminate paper balloons and use them for a word wall, add a balloon for each word. This would really brighten up the room.

Wall Decorations: Party stores carry lots of clown type decorations and circus theme stuff for kids parties, this would be great for your
door.

Bulletin boards: Cover the backgrounds with fabric that is circus related. Red/white stripes, bold colors, animals, etc.

Circus theme music: Find some circus theme music on the internet or on tape. This can be used to time students for a quick clean up. (My kids love to try to beat the music.)

Hope this helps! a b c teach . com has some adorable outlines for big top paper and circus related theme stuff. Good luck! It should be a lot of fun for the kids!

I like the circus theme...it seems to lend itself to more options.

You could have the Ringmaster of the day!

Kids could work for peanuts (reward coupons).

No Clownin' Around for the Behavior board or have elephants with names on them and they each start off with 3 peanuts. Take one away each time they mess up.

Of course elephants are Wise so you could have Wise Work.

You could incorporate some of the other ideas with tigers.

No Lion...This is a GRRREAT Class!

You could have a 3 ring circus for centers with a red, blue, and green ring? Or if you do literacy groups, the lions, tigers, and bears...OH MY!!

You could have the kids decorate a clown the first day and have circus music playing. And of course while the circus is fun, if everyone doesn't do there job, the circus could be dangerous! Talk about rules.

This could be really cute. I bet Buzy Bee's info she offered to e-mail you is awesome!

Have fun!

I did Circus as a theme last year and the kids loved it. I put a hoop in the middle of my room and had coloured strips of crepe paper coming out from it to the corners this represented the circus tent. I took photos of my kids faces. The children traced around each other and decorated an outfit. I glued the faces on. Some were strong men, lion tamers, trapeze artists - these I had hanging or on a trapeze. Good luck. If you want go back to the boards this and the K-3 one around March last year I got lots of help.

There are several messages on past boards over the last two months. I have just done Circus as my theme. The best part was getting the children to trace around their partner. Then decorate themselves as a clown etc. I used the digital camera to take their photo and place where their face would be. I also put a hoop in the centre of the ceiling and had coloured crepe paper coming from it.
Email me if you want more info.

A circus theme would be cute! I always like the kids' names to be on the door in some fashion. I would put a Ringmaster near the top, with your name on her. Then have different clowns, animals, tight rope walkers, etc... all over the door. When you get your kids' names, you can add them to the pictures. You can probably get a circus coloring book to find different circus pictures - or use several shaped tablets (school supply stores). Or even a bulletin board set may have enough cut-outs to label.

Sorry, my mind's blank on anything else right now. You might want to start a new thread called "Circus theme" and see what others can recommend. :)

I do a "Ballooning Behavior Board" title on top of BB.
It is color coded-Larger ballons posted at top with the following:
Green Balloon-Good Behavior
Yellow Balloon-Warning
Blue Balloon-Lost Priviledges
Red Balloon- Teacher Calls Parent

Each student has a pocket with their name on it at the beginning of each week each child has a green balloon if they keep it until Friday they go to the treasure box(you can use stickers or other incentives). You have to prepare the balloons before school begins-green balloons for the whole class and yellow for about 1/2 class, maybe 5 blue and 5 red they are placed in a small mini pocket chart velcro to bottom of BB for easy access. This works great for the year but what sets the tone that you mean business when it comes to behavior is to make an example. There will always be 1 child that can try your patience so the 1st student that gets a red balloon I take my cell phone out in class and call the parent on the spot. The rest of the class now knows you mean business!!! Most of all be consistent!!! If Johnny is talking during a lesson tell him to move his balloon. This means from green to yellow and so on. I printed small colored balloons from clip art laminated them and glued them to popsicle sticks so they slightly stick out of the student's pockets-making it easy to see the colored balloons.If you have Everyday math on Friday we have game day-my students lose that priviledge and must work from a text book instead.
I've used this 2 yrs. in a row its great you can also tie in a circus theme for your room! I hope this helps!
Jeannine

I TAKE AN OBJECTS THAT A PREFORMER MIGHT USE(WHIP- LION TAMER) AND PLACE IT IN A BAG AND PLAY TWNETY QUESIONS WITH IT---WE DO TORN PAPER CLOWN HEADS--THEY ALWAYS TURN OUT GREAT--WE USE GRAPHING CLUB IN COMPUTER LAB AND GRAPH WHICH PERFORMER WWE WOULD LIKE TO BE--WE PLAY WHEEL OF FORTUNE USING CIRCUS WORDS AS THE PUZZLES---I'M VANNA WHITE(HA)

I am a first year teacher and I'm doing a theme on circus to end the year. I read books to them about it and we do different projects with that but one activity is to have them make up a title about a circus book and they become the illustrator and draw the cover. If they are advanced, I have one, they can make up the story for the inside. They have folded a piece of 9x11" paper so it opens like a book. They loved this and the lower ones can do it and the higher ones are challenged with writing words for a story. Good luck.