Kindergarten classroom birthday ideas can be simply magical. Consider the power of a celebration with a bunch of children all focused on one five-year-old. Yet kindergarten birthday celebrations are much more than several dozen cupcakes, balloons, or goodie bags.
These days families have a variety of health considerations and dietary expectations, not to mention concerns about the unnecessary costs that traditional kindergarten birthday foods bring. It just makes sense to consider creating something new. Different rituals. Meaningful kindergarten traditions.
Kindergarten Birthday Activities: #1
Celebration of Life Ceremony
Preparing for the Ceremony
When my colleague, Tiffany Palmatier, joined our school as a kindergarten and first grade looping teacher, she brought her favorite version of ways to celebrate each kindergarten birthday. Her emphases were deemed “celebrations of life.”
At the beginning of each year, she sent an email to parents explaining how to celebrate birthday in kindergarten. She asked the parents to send several special photographs of the child highlighting important milestones in their life.
During that first week of school, she would invite the children to create a collaborative poster honoring all their birthdays. Each child added their mark to the design. As each kindergarten birthday approached, the art piece they designed would be displayed just outside their classroom door.
Other preparations she made for the Celebrations of Life:
- Her main class carpet had a huge Earth featured in the middle. She planned for the children to sit around the edges of the carpet. The Earth became a part of the ceremony.
- She gathered one large class candle and matches to celebrate each kindergarten birthday.
- She collected different types of rocks – one for each child plus some extras.
- Tiffany wrote the names of all twelve months on cards and stacked them in order (from the current month. For instance, at the beginning of the school year, the cards would be stacked from August to July and change month by month.)
On the Morning of the Life Ceremony
On the morning of each child’s “celebration of life,” Tiffany hung the collaborative poster outside the door. As each student arrived, they could easily see the date would honor a celebration of life for one of their little friends. Tiffany also opened the parent email and saved the child’s special photographs on the smart board to showcase during the ceremony.
Just before the ceremony itself:
- Tiffany lit the candle.
- The birthday child selected a special rock to pass around the circle during the classmates’ participation.
- Then the birthday child took the stack of months and laid them in order from the month of their birth to the end of the year, all around the Earth.
The Celebration of Life Ceremony Itself
When the official ceremony began for each kindergarten birthday, it followed this order:
- Tiffany would dramatically present an official “welcome” proclamation recognizing the child, the birth date, and a welcome to all the friends and/or special guests to these kindergarten traditions.
- The child walked around the Earth, passing each month. As the child reached the birthday month each rotation (for example, every August), the class would count out the years of life – “One year old… two years old…”
- The class would view the photographs of the child’s significant milestones over the years of their life.
- Then, the classmates would pass the chosen rock, each stating a compliment for the birthday child. (If a child had difficulty coming up with a compliment, they could always simply offer a birthday greeting instead.)
- After all the compliments, a Birthday song was sung. (During this time of repeated verses, the birthday child walked around the circle accepting hugs, handshakes, or high fives from classmates.)
“Happy birthday. It’s your day.
Hope it’s great in every way.
We will help you celebrate
Because we think you’re really great.
Happy birthday. It’s your day.
Hope it’s great in every way.”
The Honor Evident in Celebrating Such Kindergarten Traditions
Who wouldn’t feel honored from a ceremony such as this one? Although I had taught over 20 years already, I found myself excitedly adopting many of Tiffany’s kindergarten birthday activities. I also discovered Sally Haughey and her fairydustteaching.com blog. In it, she features incredible ideas for collaborative art and meaningful celebrations. How grateful I am to be able to adopt engagements from my phenomenal colleagues and the best ideas from all around the world – and then be able to make them my own.
My Class Variations of Tiffany’s Kindergarten Birthday Activities
- Tiffany’s carpet actually had a world in the center of it. Since the feeling was incredibly special, I wanted to emulate that earthy feel through an art piece of our own. After reading Atlantic (G. Brian Karas) and Earthdance (Joanne Ryder), we looked closely at the illustrations before embarking on our own world painting. During that first week in school, we read both books, closely examining the unique people and features of our planet. Then the children were invited to replicate their own world.
- Rather than a poster, I purchased an art canvas. My children worked on a class-made painting to display on an easel outside the door on each kindergarten birthday.
- As a fan of glistening lights, I added a beautiful strand of multi-colored lights with big bulbs to the top of our teaching area. For each celebration of life, we would lower the classroom overhead lights and turn up the light strands instead for our new kindergarten traditions.
- Just to vary a bit, my class adopted the eloquent words from Nancy Tillman’s “On the Night You Were Born” as our birthday tribute. It’s amazing how the children grew from listening to me quote the poem at the beginning of kindergarten to leading it themselves later. (And check out the last picture in this post to see some of my oldest students’ experience with this poem!)
Kindergarten Birthday Activities - #2
Special Tub of Birthday Books in Class Library
Having a birthday means special privileges throughout the day. Over the years I’ve collected a nice assortment of kindergarten birthday books. During the Independent Reading portion of our Reading Workshop, the birthday child is invited to read from that tub. Here are some of our class favorites:
o The Secret Birthday Message (Eric Carle)
o I Am Invited To A Party! (Mo Willems)
o Happy Birthday Hamster: Hot Rod Hamster (Cynthia Lord)
o Click, Clack, Surprise! (Doreen Cronin)
o Scaredy Squirrel Has A Birthday Party (Mélanie Watt)
o A Birthday for Bear (Bonny Becker)
o Carl’s Birthday (Alexandra Day)
o Happy Birthday, Mouse! (Laura Numeroff)
o How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Birthday? (Jane Yolen & Mark Teague)
o A Birthday for Frances (Russell Hoban)
o Happy Birthday, Tacky (Helen Lester)
Kindergarten Birthday Activities - #3
Calendar Emphasis of Birthdays
Rather than the typical calendar work of most kindergartens, we had moved to a nontraditional focus on authentic use of real calendars in our world. Rather than emphasizing patterning of store-bought calendar pieces and chanting the days of the week, each child decorated a tab of paper that would frame our calendar days instead. We would spend group time counting the days until our next kindergarten birthday, between the birthdates, comparing the number of birthdays in August versus September, and more.
Kindergarten Birthday Activities - #4
Birthday Lanterns on Lighted Strings
At the beginning of the year, each lantern was marked with a child’s photograph, name, and birthdate. When the birthdate arrived, the child was invited to create a strand of specialty beads of their choice. By the end of the year, the lantern strings were all decorated and lit.
Kindergarten Birthday Activities - #5
Recorded List of Compliments & a Subsequent Photo for a Family Keepsake
As the compliments rolled off their tongues, I grabbed varying colors of markers and jotted the highlights of their classmates’ compliments. It takes quick recall and faster handwriting; but I did my best to list adjectives or short phrases representing each one. For repeated statements, I would underline. At the end of the day, I took a photograph of the birthday child standing beside their wall of compliments.
To see other ideas from Sally Haughey’s Fairy Dust Teaching blog, check this post. You’ll find a plethora of ideas in creating birthday traditions alongside your children. Reggio Inspired: Birthday Traditions - Fairy Dust Teaching
To learn how to start a water inquiry in the beginning of the school year, check this out:
