add calender,specail messages to homepage

I have seen on alot of forum come really great hom pages, where you all have calenders, messages, polls etc showing. At the moment when new users hit on my site they only have te register, sign in and sign out buttoms etc.
I would love to make my home page more exciting.

How do I go about adding these changes....for example how do I add the polls and calender to my homepage?

cheers

Add widgets.
tutorial on how to add widgets Here